I feel like I have been through the ringer this week. So much so that the call my husband and I got the other night from a Hilton representative selling a week in their new luxury time share in Hawaii, was a cruel, cruel joke. The rate wasn’t that incredible but I was sitting there listening to the guy’s spiel thinking, “YES! YES!, Sign me up!”. Sadly, my husband hung up the phone and no week in Hawaii was purchased.

Starting Kindergarten has been tough on me! It has been two weeks now and I’m so beat. My upper body is sore from pushing a Bob Dualie, loaded down with three kids, up the short hill to school. I also have had to rework my morning routine and move everything up an hour to make it out the door on time  to get Olivia to school. My goal is to get her there when the bell rings and all the kids line up. There have been at least two times that we’ve walked in just after the bell rang. I hate it when she asks me “Mommy, are we late?” Affirmative daughter, we are late again. Parental fail.

But this transition hasn’t just been hard on me, it’s been hard on Olivia. She has been coming home exhausted. Although she is at kindergarten for much less time than she was in preschool she seems ten times more tired than before. I also have been experiencing more talking back, more whining, and a few more tears than usual too. I am waiting for her to get her kindergarten groove on and for me to get used to our new routine. I sorely underestimated the weight the entire transition to kindergarten would have on us.

I haven’t only noticed Olivia’s change in attitude and tiredness but I have also been noticing her growing interest in boys. At first it seemed cute to me. Not long ago Olivia was really into the movie Tangled. Right around that same time she became infatuated with a little boy in her preschool class named Flynn. Flynn is the name of the guy in Tangled who helps Rapunzel escape her tower. Olivia and I would be headed to school and she would see Flynn heading to school with his mom and she would get so excited and say, “There’s Flynn!”.  She would hurry me along so we could catch up to them.

Some days, Olivia would go to school and ask the preschool teacher if Flynn was coming to school that day. And when Flynn left the class and moved on to another school, Olivia wasn’t too sad, because she then began talking all about Mason. She would have pretend phone conversations with Mason on her toy phone. I would overhear her talking about their wedding. She would come home and tell me that Mason was going to marry her.

Wednesday Olivia had a playdate with the little boy next door. She told me the day before this playdate that she wanted to pick out a pretty dress to wear to his house. She asked me to make sure the pink polka dot dress was cleaned  in time.

Then also this week Olivia reunited with a little boy in her new kindergarten class. His mom and I were in a playgroup together when the kids were babies, so when I saw them outside of class that day we stopped to talk to her and her son. I told Olivia that she knew Sawyer when they were little and she and Sawyer just smiled at each other. My bad? She hasn’t really stopped talking about Sawyer since.

I try to talk to my kids each day after school to find out what they learned about and what they did. I am hoping Olivia is learning about more in school than just Sawyer, ‘cause from talking with her you wouldn’t know it. Now I don’t want to overreact just yet, because she isn’t even five years old, but I couldn’t help but wonder if my daughter is getting boy crazy too soon? Isn’t that supposed to start later on?

I guess I’m curious to what other moms of girls have experienced in this area with their daughters? I remember when I was a kid the big thing was girls and boys chasing each other so I know that there is an early interest in the other sex that happens. But my little one seems to really have a strong interest. I am in trouble.

So this week seems like I’ve been launched into parenting a kid with early-onset-adolescence; talking-back, tears, and boy talk. I’m going to put on a brave face and try to scale it down a notch at home by getting them to rediscover the playdough, focusing on coloring, and limiting the shows about princesses at least for a little while. I’m going to keep soliciting thoughts from other mothers in my boat, like a mom I spoke to today who has a similarly boy-obsessed second grader. But until I figure it out and decide whether or not this obsession is normal and what to do about it, I’m going to wish upon a star and hope that someday her prince does come, but not until she’s at least 21.