In just a month my kids will be sitting in their first day of school finery with sharpened pencils and new notebooks. Maybe my own mother let me hang out in stationary stores too long, but I loved school and school supplies. I could reminisce like an old pooter about what it meant to me back then and that link is of the store that seduced me as a child, but I’m here to write about the reality of it with older adopted kids, and it’s not always pleasant.

It’s something along the lines of All Hell Breaking Loose. Meltdowns abound, tempers splutter and flare as the anxieties rise and tensions simmer on the front burner, burning us all. Three sons will leave the Big Dog Arena of the hotshot fifth grade where they were the oldest in the school to be the babies of the middle school. I’m taking all three to get their second chicken pox vaccinations today, an outing that has already caused one of them to burst into tears over nothing this morning. Way to ruin a summer mom.

I need to take the nine elementary school kids and the eight middle schoolers to get new shoes; toes are poking through holes as their feet seemingly grow overnight. My high schoolers can wait until next month and my next paycheck.

I’ve been quietly, unobtrusively buying supplies and backpacks. If I make a big deal out of it, they’ll figuratively make me pay. This is the year that everyone will be in school, allowing me the luxury of 8-3 each day to catch up on all the work around here, but in their suspicious eyes, that much freedom for Big Mama is scary. What if she finds out she likes to be alone?

Are you kidding me? Find out? I LOVE to be alone, to work in my gardens and read without interruptions. I still want to be the mama though and that’s the message I need to send as my baby prepares to march off to Pre-K, scared and excited, she's pictured here with one of her many nephews. I'm pretty sure she'll be the only one in her class who can claim to be an aunt to 16 before age five.