But as the year went on, and Gabe got older and more familiar with the routine, we got to the point where I felt he could be trusted to sit on the child-sized bench by the cubbies while I helped Thomas get settled. It also helped that a child-size stuffed duck also sat on the bench, and Gabe took it upon himself to "take care of the duckie" while I took care of Thomas.

One day, though, the whole thing got to be too much for little Gabe, as he'd been aching to go to school ever since Thomas had entered preschool. "Pleeease," he'd plead every single day, pulling my hand as hard as he could toward the doorway to the classroom. Even the teachers got used to it. "Next year, Gabe!" they'd tell him. "It'll be your turn next year!"

So that day, I had walked Thomas to the classroom door, leaving Gabe, as usual, on the bench with the duck near the cubbies, when a red-and-yellow blur streaked past me into the classroom, and I saw all the children already in the classroom all turn to look at this new child, in a familiar red winter jacket, who'd dropped a big yellow duck on the floor inside the classroom and had already grabbed trains and started playing with them. And I had to practically drag him, while he literally kicked and screamed, out of the classroom and back to our van.

You'd think, then, that going to school would be a good incentive to work a little harder at potty training, since I'm not going to send him until he's proficient at it, but as of right now Gabe's not nearly close enough with his potty training, so we're planning on delaying his entrance until January. Which is both good and bad. Bad because he's been so excited about going to school, but good because I'll have him home with me for a bit longer, which, this year especially, is definitely needed on my end, because Thomas, our oldest, our firstborn, is off to Kindergarten in September.

I'm genuinely excited for him. I'm sure he's going to love every minute, and indeed he's been excited about going to Kindergarten since the beginning of the summer. But of course I keep thinking about how, except for the couple of hours a week he was at school the past two years, he's been home every minute, with his brothers and me. How forlorn Gabe would get last year when Thomas was at school. How John has never known home without his brothers home almost all of the time. And how, even though school has been a part of our lives for the past couple of years, this year marks the entrance into a distinctly non-babyhood, non-early-years-of-parenting era, what with the advent of homework-ing evenings, school projects, science fairs, extracurricular activities and the daily necessity of clean school clothes. A friend even joked recently that I'm a "real mom" now that I have a school-goer!

Of course, she really was joking, this friend of mine, who herself is currently entrenched in those hard early years of parenthood, but like me is wistfully watching the time go so much quicker than she, or I, would like. So bittersweet is this passage of time! Which is why I'm not too sorry to have a little boy who, though desperate to go to school like the big kids, nevertheless is resisting potty training, thus keeping him home with me a while longer.

Kate Towne Sherwin is a stay-at-home mom (SAHM) living in Saratoga Springs with her husband, Steve, and sons Thomas (4), Gabriel (3), and John Dominic (1). She can be reached at sksherwin@hotmail.com