Most mornings our daughter dons her kitty helmet and rides her scooter to school, me trotting along beside her like a secret service agent keeping up with the presidential motorcade. We almost always make it before the 7:55 early bell, though sometimes it’s close. We line up with her kindergarten class, and the day begins; I wander back home, uphill, scooter and helmet in tow.

This morning I realized we’ve just got a few days of this routine left before summer vacation is on us. How can it be the last week of the school year? It has literally zoomed by, a blur of dressing-for-school drama, class projects, friends and frenemies, assemblies, pajama days, birthday parties, “marble jar” parties. There were a lot of parties.

In September I was gnashing my teeth that our daughter didn’t have an assigned school, spending 10 days in limbo as the district figured out what to do. But 9 months later, both our kids have found second homes at their schools, these rich, complicated lives they live outside of the house, and into which Jay and I get only a peek.

And of course, they’ve made their home in our home. “My daddy, my papa, my cat,” our son explains, a little testily, to anyone he thinks might not understand that this place and everything in it belongs to him and his sister. And it does.

So while the last week before our summer camp is a crazy blur, and it feels like there’s no time to get the million things done, it felt important to savor this morning’s scooter ride. One of our last until September. One of the little things I’ll remember with joy for the rest of my life.