I just glanced up at my trusty calendar, and (get ready for this) it's AUGUST! What? How did that happen? Last I remember it was June. I was trying to adjust to the kids being home all day with me, and now I'm two and a half weeks away from having a first grader and a kindergartener. HOLY CRAP!

My super-heroine first grader, I'm excited for her. She's going to see all her friends, meet her new teacher - and even better, stay for a whole extra hour of learnin' fun.

My son, though - I've got a little lump in my throat about him starting school. He's younger, more emotional, less socially gifted than Miss Thang The Elder. He only had six months of preschool, and he did fine. He was all "Mommy, who?" when I left him at the door, and I'm certain he'll thrive in Kindergarten. He is the sweetest kid, and makes friends easily. He just gets his feelings hurt easily. My reservations have nothing to do with him, really.

It's all about me. When I found out I was carrying him, my oldest was 9 months old. When he was born, I was struggling to parent my 17 month old daughter, who had given up naps and has always been a big slice of life kind of girl. In many ways, he is my most attached child, out of necessity. I carried him everywhere in a sling, to keep him out of his sister's clumsy grasp. Despite all the "mama's boy" treatment, he still walked at 8 months, and is independent and downright opinionated.

I was happier than I ever thought possible, because I had been through this whole mother-of-newborn gig recently, and all the previous problem areas (lack of sleep, nursing issues, poo blowouts, crying jags, you name it) were not so problematic. Maybe he was an easy baby. Maybe I was a more laid back mom. It just flowed.

Now, looking back, I don't really remember him as a baby. I have certain snippets in my mind, but his babyness was tangled with my oldest's. When I watch our early videos, I am struck by his baby noises. Oh yeah, I think. He did do that, didn't he? Let's not forget the child is not yet five years old. My brain, she is addled.

He was fifteen months, maybe sixteen when I discovered I was pregnant for a third time. Much of his early toddlerhood passed by as I struggled with weird body aches and pregnant metabolism. I joke that he was raised by the Teletubbies. We squeezed in a Disneyland vacation before he turned two, and he suffered his first buzzcut a few weeks later, after his sister gave him a few bald patches during the Mullet Incident. At two years and four months, he became a big brother as well, and his piece of Mommy Pie got smaller.

I guess I just have some middle kid guilt going on. He's never had me all to himself. Not that I'm such a prize. He has always been asked to share, and he has done so with a lively bonhomie. As a middle child myself, I never felt slighted, but as a mother, I wonder.

Last year, I cried for hours after leaving my oldest child in Kindergarten. And believe me, I was READY. I've been psyching myself up, promising myself that I might be able to get my house clean for once - might write more than blog entries on the fly. I might actually exercise! I'll have only one kid home for a five and a half hour stretch, and I haven't ever had that since my son was born.

So, that should be good. But I'm weepy thinking about walking away from the classroom door, leaving my second child, my little boy, who will suddenly not be all mine any longer. He'll be part of something larger than our little family, and like his sister, he'll soar. I can't help feeling lost, just a bit.

For all these years, I've been a mom to first a baby, then a baby and a toddler, then a preschooler, toddler and baby, then a kindergartener, preschooler and toddler, and now, oh my GOD I'm the parent of two school-aged kids and one kid who could technically be a preschooler almost if she ever decides to use the potty, which is so not happening anytime soon.

Whew! I wore myself out right there.

Anyway! Happy! Sad! Sentimental! Lost! Mostly, just wistful. It goes by so fast, from June to August, from baby to kindergartener, from center of the universe to center of the solar system (and then to some rocky, barren, pitted, cash-dispensing, unhip moon. Gimme a few years.)

So yeah, stay tuned for more angsty recollections and vague generalizations about my mental state and parental insecurities as I prepare to send my lone boy-child into the frontier wilds of kindergarten.