Everything changes

Since I mainly just sit on my rear right now, I can afford more blogging time. (Look! I said something positive!).

I've been thinking about my baby girls lately, not a new concept really, but I've begun to see them in a new light. The younger me saw them as, perhaps, something that was happening TO me. The things that they did and said and terrorized....they were happenings in MY life. Over the past year though, that view has started to change.

As they get bigger, they don't seem to need you quite as much as their mother, or at least not in the same ways they used to. They go potty by themselves, they grab their own after school snacks, they can play on their own, they don't swallow small objects anymore...(that often), they are less likely to fall and hit their head on the coffee table, they can bathe themselves. But they also do crazy stuff like graduate from preschool, move on to the 2nd grade, have sleepovers, friends, and their own drama. They have true likes and dislikes and their own opinions too (God forbid). They have bad things happen to them sometimes and they don't understand, and it brings me back to the times in my life that I've felt the same way. When a friend disses you for the first time, or when they just don't want to play with you anymore. You remember these things. Because, they are a part of YOUR life.

I've come to realize, my girls have lives! Mkay, that sounded like a statement by Captain Obvious himself. I don't even know if I'm making sense, so I'll just keep on trucking.

I've noticed my role changing a bit, from the facilitator of everything that they do, say, eat, breathe, and look at...to a stepping stone of sorts, someone to listen to them when they bounce things off of me, someone to make sure they have the things they need that day for school, someone to remind them things they already know. I revel in the moments now when I teach them something totally new and novel, because most things have been heard or seen before. I seem to be the padding for their fall, or the net around the trampoline. I'm not always needed, but I'm always there...just in case. How did this happen?

This change in roles has been mostly pleasant actually. I don't mind it at all. It allows me to see the progress they've made into awesome little people with their own lives and their own memories. It gives me confidence that I've taught them good things when I watch them make decisions that I would've chosen for them too, and when they treat another person just like I'd have wanted them to. And when I see things they choose that I don't care for much, I've still got the opportunity to step in afterward and say....maybe next time we should try....

I know that opportunity is fleeting. Because someday they'll be teenagers and won't give a flying crap what I say. Not only that, but they'll want to do the opposite just cuz. That's right..just cuz.

The biggest way this transformation has changed me is seen in how I treat them, with my words and actions and looks. When I look at them, I'm overwhelmed by love & empathy. Why? Because life is HARD. It totally sucks sometimes. And if I'm the one being a total lunatic in their lives right now, I'm just adding to their distress. It doesn't mean I'm throwing discipline out the window. I hold them to the same standards I do myself. And I'm not looking to be their best friend (yet). I just am more apt to open my arms wide to them when a choice they've made has gone badly, or when they "should've known better". I can comfort them in that instead of rubbing it in their little faces. I just seem to feel what their feeling lately. And it reminds me, growing up can be really hard to do.

Blah blah blah...I rarely make sense. But I guess the bottom line is...that things change, and this particular change feels right. I'm okay stepping back a little bit. This stage their in, it makes me step back, willing or not. When you drop them off on the curb at school and they just disappear inside those huge, heavy doors with their over sized backpack on their tiny shoulders....you are bound to realize: it's out of your hands. That realization is just downright painful. You know what makes it better for me? Being there when they open the door and drop all their crap right inside the door so no one else can walk through, and I say, "HI BABY!!! How was your day?" And they tell me.

I'll take that. Because I know, everything changes.