Will I Cry?

As I stood in the butchers yesterday, stocking up on meat for the inevitable back to school batchcooking, the butcher smiled and asked me was my youngest staring school on Monday. 

'He is' I replied

'Will you cry' he asked

'I will in my eye, I'll skip out the gate' I said.

But this is only partly true.

I have been asked so often this summer about how I feel about my youngest starting school that I have my stock answers, but as the day looms large I've been thinking about how I really feel about it.

Firstly I REALLY hope I don't cry, this is the start of a very exciting stage in his life, if I cry, then the tears are just for me.

Also, if I'm truly honest, in some of the darker parenting days of having four under five the idea of them all being in school seemed like some sort of unattainable dream, so to cry now would seem disingenuous.

Tomorrow will be strange, it will be bittersweet but it will also be exciting, both for him and me. I'm excited to hear about the new friendships, the new challenges that he will experience.

There is some trepidation, he's concerned about 'the new people' having gotten over an earlier concern that wearing a uniform involved him wearing a pinafore like his sisters!

I'm concerned about how his teacher will react, having had 3 reasonable calm MacDonnell girls, unleashing the 'tornado' on her might just break her!!!

But mostly tomorrow is a celebration of how far we have have come, we've weathered the storms of parenting smallies, we've emerged from under the nappy mountain with our sanity reasonably intact ( thank you wine!) and we are ready for the next phase...and all the craziness it will bring.

 So tomorrow I won't cry...or at least I hope I won't ( wish me luck on that one)