A little piece of my heart fell away this morning.

I've been trying to get Ian to walk to his class from the drop-off circle since the second week of school. I enjoy parking the car and walking with him, but once I go back to work it's going to save me a ton of time if he walks himself. His standard answer is, "When the new month starts I'll start walking," but I still ask every day to make sure.

Today we were a little late starting out. I didn't sleep well so I enjoyed the fact that Roo had a bottle at 5am and went back to sleep. I got Ian up a bit late, then I couldn't get myself motivated, so we got out of the house about 10 minutes later than I like.  We got to the parking lot and there were kids everywhere, cars everywhere, and I'm feeling gross because I haven't showered and I'm sweating because I have to wear a sweatshirt due to the fact that my bra has eaten a hole in my side and I wasn't wearing one...

Anyway, Ian likes to push Roo's stroller so we meandered our way to the school and down the sidewalk to his building. There were kids saying "hi" to him as we walked and he was polite in responding, but it wasn't until we turned the corner of the building that he got excited. He kept saying, "Hi!", "Hi!", to this child, who was holding the hand of a little girl, walking in front of us, but he didn't turn around until Ian's sixth "Hi!". When he turned around he said, "Are you calling to me?" and Ian told him that he knew him from the van that takes him to TaeKwonDo in the afternoon. The little boy (probably a second grader by the look of him) gave Ian this huge smile and held out his other hand. "Do you want me to walk you to class?" With just a brief look at me to make sure it was OK, Ian let go of the stroller and took this child's hand.

I watched them walk down the hall, this young-man-to-be, my little boy, and this little girl. To the casual observer they looked as different as could be, but they were really so similar! Three innocent little souls bound together by common circumstance, and not even aware of their differences as anything to even consider when taking each other's hands. Their skin color didn't matter, their gender didn't matter, and their age didn't make a difference. The older boy looked proud as he walked the two little one's to their class, and Ian clutched his hand while looking at him in awe.

Ian did look back once, a smile as big as the sun lighting up his face, but I realized that the little boy who looked to me for everything was suddenly looking at someone else. I'm so proud, but in the same breath my heart is broken just a little bit.