This one

I know I've mentioned a time or thousand that Will has a more difficult (to put it mildly) temperament. And he does. There's just no getting around it. He's so intense and feels every emotion so deeply that it's hard for him to deal with all those feelings. Sometimes it gets to be too much for his little body and mind and bad things happen. He yells, he gives the dirtiest of looks you'll ever get from a five-year-old. He stomps around and growls and groans and generally acts like the world is the most unjust of all realities.

But the flip side of this is that his excitement and happiness are almost real presences when he feels them. I watch him skipping down the sidewalk on our way to school, waving to neighbors and calling out "Hi!" without a moment's hesitation, and I'm kind of envious that he can feel one emotion so purely and in-the-moment-ly. 

I don't know if it's my imagination at work or what, but he's suddenly so into how everything is spelled, what letter everything begins with, finding "solutions" to problems both large and small, and "talking things over" that it's like he left for kindergarten last Thursday morning the preschooler I'd grown used to and came home that evening a bona fide elementary school-er. And while I still worry about his behavior and most especially his tendency toward being a little impulsive, I know that intellectually, for his little spongy brain, sending him to kindergarten was the right decision. Being around older students (as opposed to another year of preschool or Pre-K) seems to be benefiting him already. I know it's only been a week, and things could really go awry in the next few months and weeks in various ways, but for now, I feel good about kindergarten.

And while I don't think sending kids on to school (as opposed to keeping them out a yea)r is always the right decision for every child or every family (obviously not, as it's such a personal, almost agonizing one to make), I have a feeling that Will is going to flourish this year. It's almost as though he senses this greater responsibility  we're giving him as a sign of our confidence in him. And he'd be right.

I've said it before and I'll say it again:  I don't know what this kid's going to do with himself, but whatever it is, I'm glad to be along for the ride. Loud, bumpy and (sometimes) scary though it may be. 

Happy weekend!