Kindergarten Already?

I called the Van Buren School District office today to find out what school HaLeigh will go to in the fall. I have obviously known she was almost 5 but after I got off the phone with the secretary reality set in that HaLeigh really isn't 2 years old any more. I admit I know we've been buying larger clothes and kids makeup instead of binkys but what has happened here? Yikes!! HaLeigh Jade Boyd has been one of the brightest lights of my life for a little over three years now. She was 19 months old when I first laid eyes on her. She thinks her life would be incomplete without her brother and truly it would be. HaLeigh is spunky, girlie and incredibly sweet. I remember taking her home for the first time. It was incredibly overwhelming to take a child from someone knowing she didn't know you and that she would not be going back to the place she had called home. I remember squeezing her and asking her if she wanted to go home and be my baby. She took her binky out of her mouth and said 'yes'. I said, ok, I'll be your mama then. We went from there to FireHouse Subs where I first got in trouble with her. I didn't think she'd want her pickle. I started to eat it and she freaked out on me. She kept saying, "NO!". Little did I know that she had an eating disorder because of her neglect at her biological family's home. I had already made my first mistake with her and I'd only had her a few hours. Live and learn, thankfully. I remember the first fit she ever threw. Michael and I stood and watched and smiled because we realized she was no longer afraid of us. She was so good for a few days, never doing anything out of the ordinary, never resisting us. She was scared. That didn't last long. We were glad. I remember the fit she had when she saw her brother with us for the first time. She pointed and screamed and tried to take him away from me. She said nonsense words for thirty minutes but every once in a while she said 'baby' recognizably. It was so beautiful. She recognized her brother. She and Legend had been separated for months until they came to live with us. Now my baby tells me that the author of a book writes the words and that the illustrator draws the pictures. She also heard me teasing AshLeigh about something and then saying j/k j/k. She came to my alphabet rescue and said Mama, the next letter is L,....J, K, L Mama. I think she thought I was stuck on K. She's growing beautifully and we have many more milestones ahead but I'm sure like every other mom I can truly say I wasn't ready to think about her being in Kindergarten.