Because It Makes Me Feel Better

I've been wanting to post for quite some time now, but the stuff of Life has raised barrier after barrier against my time and mental state. At times I feel like my children's lives are slipping by right before my eyes. The weather is threatening to change, and has had its moments of cooler temps. So much so that a pair of jeans has occasionally snuck back into the kids' wardrobes. First it was Dear Daughter who exited her bedroom one morning fully clothed and ready for the day. ...Except that the jeans she had pulled out of her drawer and onto her body were no less than three inches too short for her now. That very pair was actually a bit long on her early last spring.

The next week it was Dear Son who decided sport a pair of jeans. His ankles we exposed beneath the hemlines, making him look like his nickname should be "Stretch."

I looked upon them with that irritating ache in my heart and that queasy feeling in the pit of my gut. I couldn't deny the fact that it happened again: my children changed and grew and transformed yet again as if right before my eyes. And where was I when it was happening? Such big changes. Too big not to notice until the next season begins to arrive. I considered throwing all the jeans in their wardrobes away, allowing me to perhaps stay in my state of denial. They could just wear shorts all winter, couldn't they? At least I wouldn't notice their legs growing longer by the day as their hemlines crept up their ankles.

Dear Daughter loves to tell people she is six years old now. It's really not hard to tell by the gaping hole in the front of her mouth where the last lost tooth used to reside. And Dear Son. I still delude myself that he is a baby. His curly head still has that sweet baby smell. Dear Daughter lost that baby smell some time ago. Now her head just smells like hair. Ick. I don't know what happens that turns a sweet smelling baby head into stinky scalp, but I suppose whatever it is, it's a milestone marking the end of an era forever. I squeeze my little boy every day, burying my nose in his precious yellow ringlets and breathing deeply that sweet little boy smell--dreading the day that it no longer smells so baby sweet. I plead with God, please don't let this baby grow up the way You let my first baby grow up! But I know better. And so I deny it by calling them my "babies" anyway.

Dear Son asked me one day why I call them my "babies" because they are not actually babies anymore. I told him it's because it makes me feel better.