This morning I was watching Bee as she sat in a chair, reading a library book, and it really hit me that she’s growing up. She’s all long legs (90th percentile for height!), and thick, wavy hair, and enormous brown eyes. With her adorable, shorter haircut, she really looks like a young lady.
But you see in my heart, she is still, and will forever be, a baby. My first baby. And while I’m so proud of the kind, compassionate, intelligent girl she is becoming, I sometimes long for the days when she pranced around the backyard in her Snow White dress all day. I recently discovered this video footage of 4-year-old Bee and my husband (and a darling little BabyCakes in her swing), and I watched it with a huge lump in my throat, and tears threatening to spill over.
I still so vividly remember the Snow White obsession, and it seems impossible to me that the little girl in that video, with the tiny little voice, is no longer here. She’s been replaced by a big girl who nearly reaches my shoulders, who reads a book a day, and writes about her life in a diary (which I’m not allowed to read), and does Google research (with supervision, of course) on subjects she’s interested in. Example:
Bee: “Mom, how come people don’t like fruitcake?”
Me: “Well, because it’s dense and heavy and too rich for most people.”
Bee: “Then why did somebody invent it if nobody likes it?”
Me: “I have no idea.”
Bee: “Who invented the fruitcake anyway?”
Me: “I seriously don’t know, honey.”
Bee goes to the computer in the kitchen, and types something. Two minutes later, she’s back. “It’s believed that the fruitcake was originally invented by the Romans.”
You see what I mean.
Now, I’ve only been a mother for 8 years, and I’m certainly no parenting expert, but if I could give young mothers one piece of advice, it would be this…
Treasure every age, and every stage. They all pass by too quickly.
