Graduation Day

It seems nearly impossible, but today is the last day of kindergarten for Ally and Ty. It sounds cliche, I know, but it truly does seem like yesterday we were agonizing over whether to put them into separate classrooms, getting them ready for their first bus ride, etc, and now, we are an hour from first grade. Even Ally, somehow wise beyond her years at 6, noted over breakfast that it felt like only a few days since the bus picked her up for the first time last fall.

This has been such a cool year for them. They have learned to make friends, play and learn separately from one another, which is a big deal for twins. You can't really understand unless you have a matched pair, but they become very dependent on each other for everything. They are so alike in so many ways that they tend to be on the same page pretty much all the time. And at first, I think it was a bit of a harsh reality for them to realize that not everyone at school would automatically be on the same wavelength with them. But they adjusted quickly, and to look at them now, I am just amazed at how well and how quickly they integrate themselves into social situations. And while they have made lots of new friends, they might be closer to each other than they ever have been. Absence may indeed make the heart grow fonder.

This year has been good for Lauren and I, too. Coming into the 2009 t-ball season, we really hadn't made too many connections in our town. We had a great circle of friends from before we moved here, and honestly didn't go out of our way to involve ourselves locally. But we met some really cool families over baseball last spring, met a bunch more through kindergarten and expanded again with baseball this year. Turns out you really can't put a cap on your friend list, and that's a good thing.

So, by my watch, Ally and Ty's kindergarten careers just came to a close. On to first grade. Full days at school. Hard to believe that it goes by as fast as it does.