Kennedy, my 2-year-old granddaughter, aka the love of my life, started to preschool this summer.
She told me, her Mimi, and her Pop the other day: “I grew up!”
We said, “No, but you’re growing up.”
The first few days she cried when she was dropped off, but now she goes right in, happily, gets her little chair off a stack and takes it to the table to settle in for breakfast.
It’s obvious she’s in the routine of school by certain ways she acts when she comes to visit us.
At 26 months, she’s almost potty-trained. When she was at my house the other day and I said, “Run to the potty!” Kennedy said, in a firm little voice, “No, walk.”
Yes, ma’am.
Miss Palmer, her main teacher, said Kennedy is a rule-follower. She may be the last one in line, Miss Palmer said, but she’s marching or walking — not running — as instructed.
That’s how her daddy was, too, at least at school. He only got his “card changed” once. I think it was in kindergarten for not pushing his chair up to the table when he went outside for recess.
Her Uncle Scott — different story. But he graduated from college, just like her daddy. He succeeded, despite all those red cards.
Kennedy has also called me “Miss Mimi” a couple of times. It makes her laugh, so she does it now to be funny.
One day I asked: “Who do you love?”
She said: “Miss Palmer.”
Not the answer I was looking for.
I asked: “Did you have fun playing with your friends at school today?”
She said yes, and I asked, “Who’s your best friend?”
“Miss Palmer,” she said.
This, despite the fact that I have a photo of Kennedy and me in a frame that has the words “Mimi’s Bestie” on it.
Miss Palmer is tiny, so maybe Kennedy thinks she’s one of her classmates.
Kennedy already knew a lot before she started to preschool. She’s been read to since before birth, and I think her average book count is about 10 a day. She could already say her alphabet and can count to 11 or 13, depending on the day. She’s known her colors for months; she knows stripes, polka dots, shapes, her pointer finger, pinkie and thumb, as well as other parts of her body.
Her repertoire of little nursery rhymes and songs blows my mind.
That’s what is fun about children when they start to school. Their little minds are sponges; they love to learn, and they are so innocent.
It’s almost time for school to start again, and I know there will be cheers going up across the land from exhausted parents who have spent their summers hauling kids to ballgames of all kinds, swimming lessons, practices and contests, and just trying to keep little ones entertained without having them live on an iPad.
I don’t miss the battles of bedtime and waking up early. I don’t miss that, or the homework my kids had to do, or the stress of tests.
But I can remember like it was yesterday when Kennedy’s daddy, now 29, went to kindergarten. I didn’t want to cry his first day of school, so I hugged him good night — tightly — the night before, got in the shower and sobbed like I was sending my baby off to war in a pair of Power Rangers shoes.
Kennedy’s moving up to the next class, and she’ll have a new teacher. I’m sure Kennedy will love her, too.
I hope it’s just a tad less than she loves her Mimi.
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.