Dear Ittybit,

Today was your last "Special Day" at the Marilla Cuthbert Academy for Unspeakably Charming Children.

It's not your last day of school there, but the last day in which one of your parents **points to self** will show up bearing healthy snacks that none of your friends will touch with a ten-foot pole.

It was the last day I'd have a chance to slip the photos I had taken of your classmates (all year long) into their bookbags. Photographs I'd tucked in envelopes and that you had dutifully sealed with "Love" in a color representing their name ... Blue for Billy ... Magenta for Madeline ... Silver for Sierra.

It's the last day in which one of your charming teachers will tilt their head and cluck in my direction ... when I so obviously hang up the paintings in the wrong place or as I'm reading books when I should be helping kids put on their smocks so they can paint. There will be chittering among them as I break some other rule ... such as talking to you when you are in line instead of making sure you are all as quiet as church mice.

It's been more than three years since you first walked through the doors of this cooperative preschool ... the very one I went to when I was your age ... the very one I lived above when I was a young adult.

You already know those stories, you say when I mention them in passing.

You also know numbers and the difference between upper and lower case. You can spell you name and recite your phone number. And every day you come home with a new letter and all the words you learned that begin with that letter.

Both of us have learned a great deal these last three years.

In addition to writing your name and remembering your numbers, you've learned to cut with scissors, recognize letters and understand about cause and effect, as it applies to so many things.

On the last Special Day I was finally proficient in hanging the paintings to dry, and collecting all the crafts so that parents wouldn't have to search. I easily did the chores that needed doing ... cleaning paintbrushes, wiping tables, vacuuming floors and taking out the trash.

I didn't even mess up snack time.

"O" was the letter of your last special day.

We brought Oranges and Oyster crackers and Olives (though you were quite sure no one would eat them). We also brought orange smoothies, blended at home the night before.

You helped. We blended oranges, pineapples, papayas, mangos and bananas with ice and orange juice, squeezing in the juice of a lime for good measure.

When we tested it you gave it your highest praise: "The most delicious of deliciousities I ever had in my whole entire world of worlds."

I beamed. And then I set the blender up for a second time ... this time adding kale to the mix and a plan to call the new creation "Oscar Isn't Such a Grouch After All Smoothie."

But as the kids' luck would have it, the blender broke.

And then your father gave me his patented eyebrow arch: "Kale? Really?"

"Yes, Kale. ... I just wanted to see Ms. Cuthbert's eyes roll back in her head one last time."

Of course tonight you'll have to report that I didn't need a green smoothie to do that; all I had to do was put out the green tractor trikes in the play yard.

"In the wrong place again, mom. In the wrong place again."

*Sigh*

Look out Kindergarten, ready or not, here I come.

Love,

Mommy