Each day I am reminded of how quickly time passes. Today I was reminded, not once, but twice.
This evening I attended Kindergarten Orientation. Enough said, right? As I sat in the very classroom where Chloe may spend her first year as an elementary school student, it hit me the many changes that were coming, and that I'm about to see a lot less of Chloe. This naturally presented the question, "Have I made the best of my time with her?" Well, only I know the answer to that, and while I've had plenty of shortcomings, I'd like to think the good has outweighed the bad.
A little later this evening, just after we got Ryan down for the night, we remaining three plopped on the couch together for our nightly reading. Now before I go on, let me rewind back about three weeks when I was in the kitchen one afternoon and Chloe quietly approached me. Upon doing so, she held up a book which she'd grabbed from the bookshelf in the play area upstairs and simply asked, "Mom, can we read this?"
As random as it was that my five-year-old was requesting a book with no pictures which was broken down into chapters and well exceeded 150 pages, I wasn't too surprised, nor was I about to say no. And so, that very night, Neil, Chloe and I sat together on the couch and read chapter 1 aloud. The next night, chapter 2. And over the next two and a half weeks, well, life happened and we missed some nights, but the important thing is that we kept at it. Some nights we'd even whiz through a chapter without a single pause, almost forgetting that we were reading to a small child who probably didn't understand everything, only to hear, in her own words a recap of that chapter. It was pretty amazing, the whole thing.
Tonight we finished our book.
How quickly time passes. One minute I'm holding my precious, tiny newborn baby, and the next I'm enrolling her in kindergarten and reading with her one of C.S. Lewis' greatest classics.
3 comments:
This whole experience with Chloe is beyond-wonderful. I am sooo glad you took advantage of her pivotal question and had the precious experience of sharing with her (and Neil) that wonderful classic. Looking at the cover I can see why she was drawn to it. Princesses and castles.... and I'm sure the lion got her attention too. And that she could follow along, recapping the essence of each chapter is no surprise. Over a year ago when we watched with her one of our favorite movie classics, The Thief of Baghdad (1940), her sharing Gpa's big chair with him, and telling him not to chew his chips so she could better hear the dialogue, I knew this girl was smart! Of course I'd always known it, but that experience was so telling.
I'm so happy that she took that book off the shelf so the three of you could enjoy this timeless memory.
Love you all so much.....
Gma Jill (and Gpa Roy...who also loved your post.)
I'm so glad Chloe likes to read. I find it one of the great pleasures in life. What a great family tradition to read books together!
love you all,
Gma Susie
Chase has Kindergarten orientation next week. It's a little surreal, isn't it? Seems like just yesterday we were both pregnant with these two and looking forward to the future. I think it may be going a little too fast now.
That's cute she wanted to read that story, and that you took the opportunity to spend that time reading with her.
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