My Nephew's First Day

I have two nephews, Tyler (five) and Tanner (four). Tyler's first day of school was yesterday. I took the day off of work so I could be there to document the occasion on film. These little guys are the apple of my eye. Being an Aunt is the greatest thing. I get to be there for most of the firsts and all of the other cute or funny things they do, and when they drive me crazy I can just hand them off to my brother. What a totally sweet arrangement. We had been eagerly anticipating Tyler's first day at school. It was the next milestone for him and one that we all remembered well from our childhood. Problem was, Tyler didn't want to go, AT ALL. So he was completely beligerant about having pictures taken, and wouldn't look at the camera. And when he actually did look at the camera, it was very hard to get a smile out of him. I can see my scrapbook pages now...the title could be "The Kindergarten Dropout". I was really surprised that he felt this way. Our family had been talking up school for months now, but Tyler and Tanner have a huge shy streak and they are so close in age, that they've really never had to do anything by themselves. I think if they were going together, that it wouldn't have been as bad.

Tyler wasn't alone in his misery. Tanner was just lost without his big brother. He kind of wandered around without anything to do, looking extremely pathetic. Well, my brother has decided to take action. He is going to enroll Tanner in preschool three days a week so that this doesn't happen again next year, and so that Tanner has something to do while his brother is at school. (Now mind you--big sister (me) told him years ago to do the same thing with Tyler. But I won't say I told you so.) (Okay, I told him so!)

I know both of those boys will do wonderfully in school, after all, it's in the genes. Once the first day jitters are over for Tyler, it will become old-hat and all will be well. I wish I could be a fly on the wall today at my brother's house, with the increduluous look of "I have to go BACK????" on Tyler's face that I have a feeling will be there. I'm sure I'll hear all about it tonight, since our family has to relate all of the days happenings to one another. This is one of the great things about the fact that my brothers and I are relatively close to one another. I get to live vicariously. I don't have a family of my own yet, but I can feel my brother's pain. And I did yesterday. Neither one of us wanted to make Tyler go...but it had to be done. And we all felt for Tanner. Especially John. After all, Twenty-five years ago, I was Tyler and John was Tanner. We had to leave each other because I had to go to Kindergarten, and John wandered around looking for something to do, and just kind of waited until I got home. And the "School Daze" starts another cycle.