Wow, that summer certainly flew by!! 3 months of blissful, leisurely absolutely-nothing-to-do time at home, and here we are – the last night of vacation – scratch that, tonight is actually a school night, vacation ended sometime today between piano lessons and dinner!!

This is a big year for us – 6th grade, and start of Middle School!! As my sister commented, somewhat facetiously – not a single person in our family has been to Middle School! 6th grade – yes, but not middle school – because in India we are in 1 school from kindergarten through 10th grade!! So, yes, this is a big year – the first person in our family to go to Middle School!!

Manasi is no stranger to starting at a new school – let’s see – the little kindergarten in France, then AISC, Chennai, a year in Banner Elementary, 3 years at Dulwich, and a semester at Ridgeview – how many is that? 5, and the 6th will be Dunlap Valley Middle School!! So the new school part doesn’t faze her – plus, all 6th graders will be in this together – a new school for each one of them – that should probably make the transition a little easier!

The challenging part is the new routine at the school – different schedules, lockers and no homerooms!! 3 minutes between classes to race to your locker, grab the next set of books, and head back to class!! The school did have an orientation day when kids could go in, find the locker assigned to them, figure out how to unlock it – and it really isn’t as simple as it sounds – it took me a couple of tries before I could figure it out!! Come the first day, and there’s going to be a lot of kids fumbling away at the stubborn lockers!! It’s going to take a while to settle in, to get into a rhythm – but we’ll get there!!

I totally expected myself to be a nervous wreck about 6th grade – and I’m surprising myself here – I’m actually pretty calm. Maybe it hasn’t sunk in yet – no it’s not that – I think that over the past few months, I’ve watched Manasi handle situations and people in such a mature way – I’m quite confident that my baby is going to do just fine!! So no jitters for Mom, and certainly no emotional breakdowns – well, it’s a little too early to call that – I guarantee that tears will be shed as she gets on that bus tomorrow morning!!

So it’s with butterflies in our stomach that we go to bed tonight!! Yes, this is a big year for us, and tomorrow will be the very first day!! Good luck to everyone heading back to school tomorrow – and I can feel it – it’s going to be such a fantastic year!!