Do they really have to call it graduation? He's five. He's finishing preschool. Do we have to call it graduation, wear the mortar boards and call them the Class of 2008? Do we have to go there? I am well aware that I gave birth to a sweet 7 lb, 13 oz bouncing baby boy, like, yesterday...closed my eyes for just a second to just catch my breath, and then he was five.

So tomorrow is graduation. His class has learned sign language to Louis Armstrong's What a Wonderful World to perform during their ceremony, and Luke informed me that he knows his Spanish "so good" that I'm going to cry. The humor in the fact that he calls sign language "Spanish" is just enough to cause me to crack a smile before the tears come. My Luke. Don't you remember day 1 of preschool? I do. He cried and begged me not to leave him. I left him. With strangers. I cried, too. Now Ms. Sheila and Ms. Donna are hardly strangers and very early on I figured out they don't just like my little guy, they love him.

We've had a great preschool experience, from the early "tall tale" days (Luke's wild stories of rockets, weapons, aliens) to the yellow days that gave us a glimpse of what was underneath that quiet smile. I'm not quite ready for it to be over.