A blog-worthy day!

My baby started her junior year of college last week. I am still trying to figure out how this happened. It seems like a half hour ago she was starting her first day of kindergarten. I once rolled my eyes when people made statements like that. "Seems just like yesterday..." seemed to be the beginning of many conversations of my grandparents and those of their generation.Maybe it's a rite of passage, repeating phrases like that. I'm not certain.What I am certain of is, the older my Katie gets, the more our time honored traditions mean to me. I know I am showing my age. It was bound to happen. ANd I have been doing a lot of it lately.Case in point: Katie and I have been taking a mother/daughter shopping trip to pick out her first day of school outfit for a long time. It started of necessity, really. Taking three children at once to get things for back for school proved too much for me. I started taking them one at a time, leaving the other two for a day with their Dad. We’d make a day of it. I let them pick their favorite spot for lunch. It was all about them and only them that day.

For Katie, this all came after I stopped smocking for her. In the early days, I would let her pick the smocking plate she wanted and I would spend a good part of the summer making her first day of school frock.

That ended the year we went from dresses to a top that she says resulted in the longest school day of her life. It was made of chambray, done in her school colors and featured the school mascot, Stars. I thought it was darling, but apparently I was the only one. I recall her telling the sad tale to a friend one night at church. She can comment further on that if she chooses. Suffice to say, after the smocked star shirt, we started getting her first day of school like her sister and brother did, at the all-about-you back to school shopping trip.

Now fast forward to 2009. She is about enter her junior year of college. She has attended Summer school (yes, she did get a first day of summer school dress) and we plan our day together. She goes by a professor’s office to check on a grade and mentions she is leaving to meet her mom to get pick out a back to school outfit.

“Ya’ll still do that?!” was the professor’s response. “Of course” said my Katie.

We spent most of the day in darkened shops featuring loud music and clerks with astonishing hair color (at least to me!) She picked the lunch spot, just like old times. Then we went on a hunt for just the right supplies – each year has a theme, you know. And while we are way past Disney characters and Barbie, a certain shade of pink (we call it Katie pink) we have not outgrown.
My sister wished us a “blog-worthy” day, knowing that I just started this blog thing (since her own daughter taught me how.) And it was a fabulous day. Me and my baby. Just like old times.