Eventually, the Parenting “Lasts” Begin to Outpace the “Firsts”

First words. First steps. First birthdays. First days of school. It’s no secret that “firsts” dominate the lives of parents of young children. Heck, we buy whole books about them and then forget to fill in anything because who has time for recordkeeping when there are hours of doll videos on YouTube to watch?

However, as my kids get a little older, it’s not the firsts that I find myself obsessing over, it’s the lasts. Because I have three kids, this transition has been kind of a protracted one, but since my youngest has entered kindergarten this year, the tsunami of lasts has started to overwhelm me a little.

The last first day of kindergarten with the red paper “K” pinned to their shirt so the teachers don’t lose them.

The last paper grocery bag turkey creation for Thanksgiving.

The last kindergarten Turkey Parade.

The last poorly-decorated Gingerbread Man.

Of course, the holiday season brings nostalgia to the forefront regardless of firsts and lasts, but this year there have been some extra opportunities for reflection.

When the paper grocery bag came home in my daughter’s backpack, I quickly tossed aside the instructions for creating a paper bag turkey because, obviously, I know what I’m doing at this point. I am a brilliant bird builder. A crackerjack crafter. Extremely savvy with the scissors.

In other words, my turkeys always turn out terrible, but on the bright side, I’m sure the teacher says to my child, “Wow, great job doing this all on your own!”

I did, however, put my experience to use to upgrade the last paper bag turkey I may ever create. Getting the construction paper feathers to stand up on the turkey’s rear has always been problematic (if you’ve never made a paper bag turkey this might sound weird, but if you know, you know). Fortunately, we happened to have some pipe cleaners lying around so I decided to fortify the feathers this time around. This worked out well because it took about three times as long and we ended up with paper feathers that still fell over and flopped around everywhere…but this time with pipe cleaners.

I also did a little fluting work on the feathers (I’m not going to look this up, but for my purposes, fluting means making little diagonal cuts along the paper to mimic a feathery appearance). In my opinion, this detail brought the bird from like a 2 out of 10 to at least a 4.5.

A few weeks later, my daughter brought home yet another familiar holiday craft project — a small paper Gingerbread Man. This last felt a little less significant for some reason (no offense to Gingerbread people), and it turned out to be much easier. I simply pulled out the gingerbread cutout at around 7 pm on a Wednesday and reminded Olivia that she needed to decorate it. She and her 7-year-old brother — an old gingerbread decorating pro — leaped at the opportunity to get crafty. They took the little guy into our playroom, dumped a bunch of puffballs onto the floor for some reason, and worked feverishly together to create a Ninja Gingerbread Man. The Ninja Gingerbread Man is the archetype of gingerbread people according to the Knott family.

After about thirty minutes, I heard my seven-year-old proclaim, “Well, that’s good enough,” and just like that it was all over. I did get this cute picture out of it.

It probably won’t be the last time these two, who swing wildly from mortal enemies to best friends and back again in a span of minutes, collaborate on an art project. But, it will be our last holiday with a kindergartener in the house. I guess we have to savor it. And add some fluting when the opportunity presents itself.

Some lasts seem monumental, while others seem rather mundane. Either way, they just keep coming.

Andrew is a writer of essays and humor and an editor of Frazzled, a parenting humor publication on Medium. You can subscribe to his email list for updates and follow him on Twitter for terrible tweets and more arts and crafts content, probably.