My Daughter: My Most Important Work-In-Progress

If all goes as planned, I am currently sitting in a quiet house. My daughter will be in school for the first time this school year. And unlike the last three years, this is full day!

So I am likely reveling in the silence and pondering a nap.

I am also thinking of this wonderful child who is such a mystery to me. She is full of contradictions:

She loves to go barefooted all the time, yet loves to dress up in pretty dresses.

She is fearless on the jungle gyms, yet scared of toothpaste.

She is confident enough to walk up to any kid on the playground and ask to play with them, yet fragile enough to sometimes cry because her art is not good enough.

She will remember a fact from a book we read 4 months ago, but cannot remember what she did this morning.

She is stubborn and unshakable, yet brimming with empathy and love.

This is the child who I walked to her first day of Kindergarten today. Who is equal parts excited and nervous. Who is simultaneously certain she knows it all, while fretting that she doesn’t know enough.

My child, who has grown up so much in the past year. She is no longer the baby who first went to preschool 3 years ago. She is not even the same child who entered preschool last year.

She is her own person, her own self.

She is my most important work-in-progress and the greatest enigma in my life.

This child I know so well—yet not at all.

I love her more than words can say and am so proud of the person my daughter is becoming.

And now, for that nap.

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