Missing her already

I am leaving early tomorrow because Munchkin has a soccer game and I want to go watch it. She has...gasp...a grand total of about three weeks left in her high school soccer career. That is a little misleading because she is technically only doing three years of high school, but it is still a pretty monumental realization for me.

It seems like every couple of weeks she goes through another "This is the last time I..." thing. The last time she picks her spring semester schedule. The last parent-teacher night. The last back-to-school night with the other parents. The last Halloween. The last "Fall Festival" at school. Her first application (and hopefully the only one) has been delivered, which means she may very well be entirely done with the college admissions process already. Yesterday, we talked about dress shopping for her last winter formal (also misleading..."dress shopping" is generally done in the closets of her pretend sisters.)

Now, if all goes well, she will be about three miles from me in a straight line next year. And a grand total of four stops on the red line. I am not exactly shipping her off to another corner of the world. There will be no end to chicken finger Thursdays (because I will force her to go with me if I have to!) and I will likely see her all the time. But... I probably don't really need to explain this. It's just not the same.

There will be a lot of these moments between now and next Labor Day, when I pack her up and drop her at her freshman dorm. I can promise to be a blubbering mess at least three times over the course of the year. Maybe more.

Frankly, I am not really in the best emotional state to handle this these days, but I am sure I will manage. This is supposed to be fun, right?