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We interrupt our regularly scheduled DIY blogging to bring you this sentimental post. 

You’ll have to forgive me for disappearing for a few days – I’ve been busy trying to make time stand still for just a moment.   

With my youngest daughter finishing kindergarten, and my oldest stepdaughter graduating from high school, it suddenly hit me like a ton of bricks when I was watching my youngest twirl with her friends on her last day of school.

When it comes to the time you have with your children, time never stops, in fact it flies at light speed. 

I met my hub and his three year old girl in 1995, and that little angel crawled up on my lap and completely stole my heart.  Over the years, I’ve been blessed to watch her grow from a toddler to a full grown adult, and all it happened in the blink of an eye. 

Fortunate for me, as a stepparent, I’ve been able to experience so much of what comes with the joys of parenting.    

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Yesterday, I woke up on the wrong side of the bed, and started my day in a funk.  No reason in particular, just all of those obligations that pile up on adults that we allow to get us down.  Funny, waking up in a funk is rare for me because I typically skip-to-my-lou downstairs to make some Peet’s and eagerly grab my ‘To Do’ list.

So yesterday, I went downstairs to make breakfast for my kindergartener.  As I gathered her homework in her backpack to send her off to school, I spotted something I had never seen before.  The first page of her ‘First Journal’:

Then I got misty.  What honesty, what confidence, what sincerity (and what a fabulous rose garden) expressed by a five year old on an ordinary piece of lined paper.

My mood instantly changed.  One thing I relish more than anything are the lessons learned from the most unexpected sources.

Then I remembered another humble piece of paper that came home with her on the first day of school.  It was a much recited piece written two decades ago, but still rings true.  Many of you moms have heard these words before, but they bear repeating.

All I Ever Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

by Robert Fulghum

“Most of what I really need to know about how to live, and what to do, and how to be, I learned in Kindergarten.  Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sandbox at nursery school.

These are the things I learned:  Share everything.  Play fair.  Don’t hit people. Put things back where you found them.  Clean up your own mess.  Don’t take things that aren’t yours.  Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.  Wash your hands before you eat.  Flush.

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