Revelation

Today I had a revelation.

It all started yesterday, when Lynn told me about the preschool to which she is sending Brycen here in Tennessee. It piqued my interest, so today I looked up their website. The birthday cutoff for enrollment is September 30, so for three-year-old preschool, your child must be three by September 30. Will's birthday is October 13. Hmmm... why did they choose September 30, I wondered.

I asked Tanya, my coworker and a veteran mom, about the public school cutoff, thinking maybe it was the same (and hence why the preschool had chosen that date). I'm not sure why I continue to ask Tanya ANYTHING. In the past, every answer I've ever gotten from her has been either a) awash in longwinded psychobabble or b) completely wrong. (She doesn't know I have a blog. And now I must make sure she never knows, or else delete this post!) Also, she lives in Williamson County and we live in Davidson. Nevertheless, she informed me that she had lived in Davidson County once and answered confidently that the cutoff for both counties was October 31.

Now, I don't know why I ask Tanya anything to begin with, but I have at least learned to seek out a second opinion. About 20 minutes into the Metro Nashville Public School website, after I learned oodles of minute details about MNPS I didn't particularly want to know, I finally ascertained that the birthday cutoff is September 30. I told Tanya this, and she requested that I look up Williamson's cutoff to prove she wasn't completely offbase. Yep, their cutoff is also September 30. Apparently you can raise four kids in the public school system without ever knowing this.

Anyway... although these dates vs. birthday matters always confuse me for some reason, it didn't take me long to figure out the shocking truth. Will and Sophie, in spite of being 23 months apart in age, will be in back-to-back grades! This is probably something a lot of people would've figured out earlier, like, say, once they knew their second baby's due date. But I guess I'm a little obtuse about these sorts of things and had never given it much thought. I think I'd always assumed that the cutoff was more like the end of August.

I was pretty bummed about this revelation at first. I hate to think that Sophie will always be in the shadow of her brother, and I feel like sometimes this can be the case when siblings are back to back in grades. I (very briefly) entertained thoughts of moving Will up or holding Sophie back, and while I guess both of those options could happen, I'm not going to base a decision like that on something as trivial as this.

After letting this sink in today, this evening it occurred to me that there may be great advantages to this situation. They may have a closer relationship and even share common friends. For better or worse (and this is a really scary thought) their friends could even be each other's dating pools someday! And from a selfish perspective, the convenience of having both at the same school and on the same schedule as much as possible has great appeal. I also think, if it had to be screwy like this, at least Will, the boy, will be among the oldest in his grade. The extra months of maturity may really help him. I've heard that a lot of boys end up getting held back or starting late just to give them a little extra time to mature. And Sophie, on the other hand, will probably do just fine if she happens to be a little small in stature for her grade at first.

I solicit your comments, especially any of you with siblings close in age (which I never had). How did the timing work out for you? How did it affect your lives and relationships with each other?