First the kid’s friends were the kids of my friends. Then her friends were kids she went to preschool with, none of whom has ended up at her current school. Also she seems to remember very little about her year in preschool – I’ll mention one of her friends and she’ll look at me and said “who?”

Three was such a long time ago.

Now we have entered the world of junior kindergarten, which is a whole new thing. She takes the bus to school instead of me picking her up and I don’t have duty days to spend in her classroom. This year all I really know about her friends is the names she repeats most often. And I haven’t met most of the parents.

But it dawned on me one day that her JK friends could be her friends for at least the next few years, possibly for life if she finds really good ones – which she seems to have.

I have now learned the importance of the class list, because I lost our copy and am totally helpless when the kid asks for a playdate. I also have no way of touching base with the parents of the little girl that our little girl seems to have regular misunderstandings with.

The drama, it starts early.

Sometimes I miss the times when I got to pick who she played with based on which parents I wanted to hang out with…

But it is nice to see her forming her own bonds and figuring out what she likes about other people and what maybe she doesn’t like. There are a whole lot of social lessons to learn – that not all friends are good friends, that sometimes someone might think they’re being funny but they’re not and maybe they just don’t realize.

It’s a world I still find difficult to navigate and I have to help her through it.

We’ve put the kid into a lot of activities since she was a baby. At first she and I did them together – swimming and gymnastics. There have been classes she does with Daddy, like all sorts of sports, t-ball and soccer. She’s carried on in some and some we’ve left behind. Her constants have been gymnastics in fall, spring and winter, swimming in summer and skating in winter.

Except this year instead of skating she’s taking Introduction to Hockey.

She wasn’t sure if she really wanted to play hockey, but we wanted her to try it out, and we certainly didn’t want to enrol her in a league if she wasn’t going to enjoy that, so I found this course through the City of Ottawa, we registered her and she got all the equipment she needed – some used, some for Christmas from Grandma and Grandpa and then a jersey and socks to top it all off.

At the end of last winter she was a great skater. Fearless. She would skate as fast as she could until she fell and then got right back up to do it again. I was so impressed with her, especially given my skating skills.

But when she headed out onto the ice for her first hockey lesson it had been almost a year since she had last skated and she was wobbly. She fell often. Watching her my eyes filled with tears because I worried she was going to get upset or frustrated, maybe burst into tears. I was so worried about her it was hard to watch.

But she just kept getting back up. Even though she was one of the slowest on the ice, even though she couldn’t quite figure out how to hold her stick. She just kept going. With a big smile on her face.

When she came off the ice I told her I was SO proud of her and she turned to me and said “I’m proud of me too.” And that made my heart swell even more.

Last night she woke up after a bad dream and I brought her into our bed and snuggled with her. I took the chance to tell her again how brave I thought she was and all the reasons why – because what she had done was a hard thing for her put she pushed herself.

“I like doing hard things because then I get to be brave at them.”

That’s my girl. She’s smarter than me sometimes.

There are so many specific things that I remember about that day five years ago when they finally checked me into the hospital and Joe and I knew that we wouldn’t be leaving without a baby. There are so few specific things I remember about the last five years.

I remember leaving the hospital with the car seat, just walking out and driving home and very suddenly being a mother. I remember our first day home alone together. I spent a lot of it crying after I managed to pour water all over my laptop – my only connection to the outside world.

I remember when she rolled herself over for the first time and shocked the crap out of herself, banging her head on the floor. I remember the time she was in my lap and the dog jumped up and scratched very near her eye. And the time she pulled my coffee mug off the table and I thought she would be permanently scarred until we got to the ER and she was walking around like nothing had happened.

I remember the first time she laughed and all I wanted was to hear that sound again and again.

Now I see babies and I think it’s impossible she was ever that small. I don’t remember a time when she couldn’t talk. I know she babbled almost constantly when she was awake but I don’t remember what that sounded like.

I remember that she started crawling at six months and walking at 10 but I don’t remember when she got so fast.

I remember when kindergarten seemed so far away.

I don’t remember what it feels like for her to just fall asleep on my chest. That might be the one thing I miss about her being a baby. Because 4 has been amazing and I really believe she can only get better.

One of the movies I really wanted to show the kid was the 1982 version of Annie that I grew up watching. I thought she’d love the singing and dancing, the happy ending.

But I also knew that there were bad people and scary parts – specifically the scene at the train tracks. In the past she’s shut down as soon as it becomes clear there are bad guys, she wants it turned off.

One afternoon at the beginning of the year Joe had gone out, the kid and I were looking for something to do and I thought this must be my opportunity.

Without telling her anything about it, I started streaming Annie to our TV. From the moment Hard Knock Life began she was totally transfixed. Honest-to-goodness transfixed. I don’t think she took her eyes off the movie until the final credits.

This is the power of Albert Finney people.

I’m going to try Hello Dolly next, maybe the Music Man. This child may just fall in love with all the movie musicals I loved as a child.

Insert evil laugh.

Disclosure: Staples Canada provided me with a Chromecast as part of their #StreamInto2015 campaign.