Then I went home and listened to Cat's in the Cradle while eating an entire pint of Ben and Jerry's

She...



Can swim the length of a pool and back unassisted.

Can ride a two-wheel bike without training wheels.

Is learning to read and write at an amazingly fast pace.

Is constantly running, jumping, speeding around on her scooter, doing cartwheels.

Knows how to use a computer and an iPad.

Started Kindergarten last week.

Gets on a bus that takes her away from me every morning and to a place that encourages her to run and jump and learn and make friends.

Has friends I’ve never met.

Is growing up.

I...

Am not as ready as I thought I was.

My heart

Children have no idea of the power they hold over their parents.

It’s just as well. If they did, imagine the possibilities.

It would all be puppies and ponies and chocolate for dinner.

But procuring small, fuzzy animals aside, children, from day one, hold us in the palm of their hands never realizing at any moment they can, and do, crush us. Oftentimes several times a day.

A fever will have us up all night with worry. A tantrum can send us into a fit of our own. A hug and a kiss melts our heart. The very heart they hold in their tiny fists.

It takes a hard heart to not be melted by a child’s hands, a child’s tears, a skinned knee, a hopeful look. We write about it, in baby books, in blogs. We tell our friends and our family anecdotes. Share life’s small moments. Show them the latest pictures whether they want to see them or not. We have to.

And as they grow older their power changes. They become manipulative but they’re still our babies. Still unable to comprehend what they can do to us. They have the power to wound us. Cut us to the core. Demolish us with a word. Make us bleed with an action. We grapple with our feelings for them. Love, hate, resentment, need. How crazy that all those emotions and more can be evoked all at once and by one small person. How insane we can feel this way because of...

Love.

Love at its purest as well at its most complicated.

We created them. They can end us. Give, take. Push, pull.

Power without supremacy. Surrender without frailty. Nurturing. Giving. Love.

My heart is their heart. They can do with it what they will.

The Feral Woodland Monkey Child of Awesome

See this kid?



She’s awesome.

She’s almost always filthy, half naked, with her hair in her face, climbing something incredibly dangerous and sticking sharp things toward her face on purpose. While wearing a cowboy hat.

Like I said, she’s awesome.

I don’t know where she came from - probably from that whacked-out, crazy part of my family, which if I’m being honest is most of them so the odds were good I’d get at least one child who was just this side of cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs - but she’s mine and despite her penchant for scaling walls and laying on top of the wood stove while watching SpongeBob and eating stolen carbohydrates, I love her madly.

Because she’s made of awesome it makes up for all the sleepless nights/gray hairs/added trips to my therapist. Mostly.


Look at her. If you didn't know her you’d think from her diminutive size she’d be the quiet, retiring type. You’d think because she’s a female child she wouldn’t have the ability to make the other little boys her age run away in terror, crying real tears to their mothers. You’d think from the dresses and sparkly necklaces she wears she’d be a feminine, girly girl. But you’d be wrong. She's just herself - which is awesome.

She plays in the toilet, destroys books, sits on top of upright pianos, dumps the contents of full cereal boxes onto the floor and then sits next to the 90 pound dog to share the reward, uses both hands to eat her food even though she can, oh yes she can, use a fork and spoon. She’s not going to preschool for another year but her future teachers have been warned she’s coming. They are ready because they have seen her and I do believe they understand the awesome headed their way.

You have to love her, because she is awesome.

She’s not afraid to stand up for herself, hold her ground and protect what she believes to be hers. She will tell you about her day in great detail and you’d be lucky to understand five words - because frankly, they’d be awesome words - but she doesn’t care because darnit, she’s got something to say. She will hold your face to hers to make sure you’re listening intently. And you will, because her stories are... You know.

But at the end of the day when she’s exhausted from being awesome she’ll curl up on my chest like she did when she was even tinier and demand I sing Itsy Bitsy Spider while tickling the actions on her back.

And she sighs.

And she snuggles.

And I’ll do it some more.

Not because she asked but because being with her like that, quiet and still with that perfect little creature, even after she tried to ride the dog like a horse and dumped a bottle of soap all over the bathroom floor and drew in red crayon up the stairs and after a day when even her grandparents couldn’t take her and her antics for another minute... that time with my baby girl is awesome.

Because for a moment OMG SHE'S NOT MOVING. AWESOME!

Need

CC and I went to a local children's store today to exchange a hat and mitten set I had bought for Chicky. Despite my insistence she stop growing, she seemed to have had a growth spurt and needed a larger size. We were just going to run in, get the next size up, and leave because I had many more errands to do before we needed to head back to preschool for pickup when a family caught my attention on my way to the hat display.

There was a woman about my age with her two young children, the oldest barely out of infancy and the little one around 4 months old, accompanied by someone I assumed to be the woman's mother. The grandmother was pushing the double stroller, casually picking up whatever full price item she liked and adding them to the already huge pile of clothing hanging from the stroller's handle, while the younger woman looked over the racks of discounted 6 month-sized outfits.

"Do the kids have matching Christmas pajamas yet?" she asked her daughter, and without waiting for an answer she added two more pairs of pajamas to her stack. The daughter, seeing what her mother did, sighed with what seemed to be exasperation and went back to looking at the sales rack, shaking her head. She seemed resigned to her mother's shopping spree.

Try as I might I couldn't stop my throat from constricting and my eyes from tearing up. It was exactly something my mom would have done. I could easily put myself in that woman's place and my mom in her mom's. Mom would have spoiled her granddaughter's silly and would have ignored all my pleas to stop buying them things they didn't need. Secretly, of course, I would have loved every second, knowing how much pleasure she would get from dressing up the girls. She would have bought them little trinkets for no reason other than she saw something they would have liked and they were never far from her mind. It would never be about the purchase but what she could do to make her grandchildren happy. All at once I was overcome with longing for the inevitable bickering between us. Five hundred different emotions hit me all at one time.

I coughed, dabbing at my eyes while I knelt down pretending to look at a satin holiday dress I had no intention of buying, willing myself to not turn into a huge puddle of tears in the middle of the store. Sweat started to pool between my shoulder blades and behind my neck. I was alternately furious at the hand life had dealt us and overcome with loss, both for me and my girls. I had a hard time seeing through my anger at the younger woman. I couldn't think straight because I was too busy imagining myself in her place. Honestly, I wanted to shove her for not seeing how good she had it.

Leaving the store seemed like a very good idea at that moment. In my haste I almost forget to grab the larger hat and I would have if I hadn't snagged the arm of my coat on the rack as I rushed by. With it in hand, I pushed the stroller containing a very tired and cranky CC toward the register and waited for the lone sales associate to ring up the three customers in front of me. While we waited the grandmother and her overflowing stroller got in line behind us and CC, the social creature that she is, waved furiously at the woman.

"Hi!" she called. "Hi!!"

"Hi to you," the grandmother replied with a smile. "What a pretty hat you have. Did your mommy get you that hat?"

"Hi!" CC answered. She put her hands in front of her eyes. "Boo!" She cackled at her own game.

The older woman laughed and returned the gesture. "Peek-a-boo!" CC roared with laughter.

I didn't say anything, just smiled and tried to stop the prickly feeling behind my eyes from coming back. So many things my mom missed.

Finally it was my turn at the register. Beside it was a display of fleecy holiday pajamas. Normally I'm put off by those displays, obviously intended to entice the shoppers in line to put more in their cart, but this time I grabbed two pairs, size 12 months and 4T, and put them on the counter with the hat.

"Did you find everything you were looking for today?" the girl asked me.

You don't have what I need in this store, I wanted to say.

"Yes," I answered. In a shaky hand, I signed my name on the credit card machine.

The grandmother smiled at me as I gathered up the shoe CC had thrown while waiting for me. "She's beautiful," she said. "I bet she'll look really cute in those pajamas."

Tears were threatening again. "Thanks," I mumbled over my shoulder as I turned to leave.

I placed the bag with the Christmas pajamas on the handle of our stroller while CC yelled, "Bye bye!" all the way out the door.

Nobody knows me like my baby

And I like cream in my coffee
And I hate to be alone on Sunday
And nobody knows me like my baby
- Lyle Lovett


Five years. It seems like a lifetime, it seems like an instant. Happy Anniversary, Babe.