This year is just beginning, yet it’s already moving too quickly for my liking. January is almost over and all too soon it will be August. Since the day my daughter was born I’ve been trying to slow down time, to make all her phases of growth last just a little bit longer. This year though, this will be the year I can see myself wanting to hold on even tighter than I’ve tried to before.

This is the year my baby starts kindergarten. This is the year that she’ll begin to grow away from ever really being my baby again.

I realize for most parents the start of the next school year still seems eons away. They still have a spring break, concerts and tests and award ceremonies to look forward to. All of which followed by that tricky double-edged sword that parents both love and hate, summer vacation. Yet to me, the next seven months until that first day of school feel like they’ll be gone in a blink. I know fall will be here long before I'm ready.

And oh what a whirlwind of firsts for Skye this fall will be.

She will walk down her first hallways, learn from her first teacher, experience her first school lunch. She’ll meet her first best friends and her first worst enemies. She’ll play on her first playground where she’ll skin her knees, sit in the first desk with her name printed out in the corner.

I even get emotional over the most ridiculous of firsts, like her first school supply list. Then there are the firsts I’m not as excited about, yet know will come just as surely as the rest. Her first run in with lice, and her first run in with bullies. The first time she learns firsthand just how mean pre-teen girls can sometimes be. The first time she learns just how cruel teenage boys can sometimes be. I know those last few firsts are years away yet, but I know they’ll be here sooner than I’d like.

Because I also know that once the school years hit, time only starts to speed up more.

Soon she’ll be experiencing other firsts, some of which will be of a very different nature than the innocence of her childhood years. Like her first boyfriend and her first heartbreak, her first bra and her first school dance. Even the firsts she may be less-than proud of herself. Her first hangover, her first failed test, her first (hopefully minor) confrontation with the law.

I know I can’t keep all these firsts from happening, I know my baby girl has to grow up. This year she officially moves past being a preschooler, and all too soon she’ll be moving past being a kid.

The thing I hope for most is that through all the things life throws her way, through all the many firsts, she’ll still want me around. She’ll still want to tell me all about them.

I want to know about them all. I want to watch her make her mistakes and then learn from them. I want to know about the firsts that will never become seconds. I want to see her try her true passion for the first time. I want to share in all the joy, sadness, confusion, rage, betrayal and beauty that all the firsts of her life will bring.

It all starts this year, this bittersweet year of firsts.

***