Day 11: Your earliest childhood memory

When I think back on my childhood memories, I remember bits and pieces from a lot of different events, but not a whole lot of complete memories are swimming around in my head. Because of that, I decided to go with the one I can remember the most about, which happens to be my first day of kindergarten.

I have an older sister that is 5 years older than me. When I was old enough to finally play and run around with her, she was in school for half of the day. It was my hell. I dreaded the days that she had to go to school, as I felt as though she was my own personal source of entertainment. In my little toddler brain, I always thought that when you were old enough to go to school, you have really made it. That's where the action was, and that's where I wanted to be. So naturally, you'd think I'd be excited to go to kindergarten right?! Wrong. I remember I was excited...at first. Then, as my mom was dropping me off for my first day of school, with Mrs. Jorgensen at Vineyard Elementary School, I was excited, nervous and scared all at the same time. I couldn't help but wonder what if the other kids didn't like me?! What if they didn't want to play with me?!It was almost too much for me!

But then, I realized that all the other kids were feeling the same way I was: we were all experiencing kindergarten for the first time, and we all just wanted to have friends. During our first recess, I was still feeling out the joint. I was slightly shy when I was younger, so it took me a little while to warm up to people. There was a girl that I was just absolutely captivated by. She had pretty blond hair, and was wearing a white dress, with pretty white socks with ruffles on them. A white dress?! At the time I was impressed because I thought she looked like a bride. However, these days, I look back and am impressed because she was 5 years old and was capable of wearing white....and keeping it white! I'm going on 28 and still haven't quite mastered that skill! Anyways, I just wanted to be friends with her, she had a kind vibe about her. Low and behold, she was my first friend I ever made at school! We went and played on the swings together. That girl's name was Nicole Kidd, and I am even still friends with her on Facebook to this day :) (Nicole, if you read this, pay no attention to the fact that I remember what you wore on your first day of kindergarten. NOT creepy ;) I prefer to call it "attentive!")

This is my kindergarten class  picture. I took a page out of Nicole's book and am in the white dress in the second row. Nicole is the blond girl on the top row.

I find it fitting that this was my earliest childhood memory I remembered the most detail about. Tomorrow is Jaylinne's last day of preschool, and I'm having a rough time with it. I can't believe that my baby will be going to her first day of kindergarten in a few short months! I'm not ready for this!? Where did the time go?! (I figure I'm entitled to a mommy meltdown at least once or twice a month. That's the standard, right?) I just hope that her first day will go as smoothly as mine did, and she will have a blast! Who knows, maybe one day she'll even blog about it ;)