I used to be one of those people. You know, the kind that judge all those moms out there on social media for posting 424,312 photos of their child’s first day of school. Why was it such a big deal, I wondered? No one cares, I thought! I’ll never be one of those moms, I said judgingly to myself.

Then this week happened. This week we took our daughter to her first day of preschool, and now I understand.

We have worked hard to develop this little being into an independent human. A woman in training who is strong, tough and confident. We love on her when she needs love, at the same time trying not to coddle. We’ve worked with her on these things since the moment she was born. It started small with teaching her how to soothe herself to sleep, and has developed now into teaching her to ask politely for what she wants and when she needs help. All small things, but all important because we know we’re raising an adult.

One day she’ll be grown and on her own, and we want to give her the best foundation possible to be a helpful, strong, independent, thoughtful, hardworking, loving, and generous member of society. We’re not perfect, and we know she’ll have issues from how she was parented just like everyone else does, but we do our best with the end goal in mind: we are raising an adult.

So this week, as I held her hand and walked her into preschool I cried. I cried happy, proud, ugly tears. I didn’t cry because I’ll miss her at home with me (even though I definitely will!). I cried because she’s progressing towards adulthood in a beautiful way. I cried because all of our hard work is paying off. I cried because she didn’t cry, which made me oh so proud to be her mom. I cried because being a mom to this tiny little human is the most amazing thing that’s ever happened to me.

And I took pictures…and proudly posted them on social media. To say to the world, see world, this is MY daughter! Look at her! Look at how grown up she’s becoming, look how confident she is, look how beautiful inside and out, but most of all look how PROUD I am to be her mom!

I guess that makes me THAT MOM. I’m 100% ok with it, because I’ll never apologize for being that mom who is proud of her child, and I’ll never judge another mom again for being proud of theirs.