Today is such a day of mixed emotions for this Mama.
My last baby is turning 10-years-old.
TEN! We are talking double digits here. For the first time in my 17+ years as a parent, I no longer have a child in the single digits.
This is it. My last baby is no longer a “little” baby anymore. She’s a preteen. Her brothers are long into the teenage years.
Is it okay to just stop writing and just cry now?
The first time this happened, I still had a seven and a two-and-a-half-year-old. I could celebrate my big boy.
The second time, I still had my sweet little five-and-a-half year old. Nothing big was happening anytime soon.
I can still picture the moments of telling my husband and sons I was pregnant, of finding out she was a girl (and my sons’ infamous reaction of “well, I guess we lose our playroom now, don’t we?”) Of the moment she was put in my arms for the first time. They all feel more like yesterday than a decade ago. She was the child who completed our family. Our only girl. She still feels so little to us. Ten just doesn’t seem possible.
There are great things about the ages the kids are now. Independence being the biggest. I have long forgotten the days of carrying around a diaper bag. It’s been eight years since a diaper has even seen the inside of this household. Everyone can dress themselves, bathe themselves, she can do her own hair unless she wants something other than the basics done to it. We are even getting to the point where we can make basic foods/meals and do laundry. The oldest even drives! Let me tell you, there is nothing nicer when you are dead tired than handing that kid a debit card and sending him to the store to pick up what you need for dinner instead of having to go yourself, or if he gives you a hard time taking out the garbage because he’s playing video games, forcing him to pick up his little sister from her dance practice.
While it’s nice have these big kids who are so mobile and can help out, I do sometimes miss my babies. Instead of this little girl running around the house wearing princess dresses, I now have a dancer who needs competition costumes and wants to shop at Justice. Instead of toys, she begs for her own cell phone. The little toddler who so cutely mispronounced everything now uses “like” every other word in her sentence as if she were already a teenage girl.
This is the last kid going through all of this. This one hurts.
I understand she is still somewhat little. All three of them are relatively still young, but this is a pretty big milestone. Reality is hitting that there really are no babies left in this house. In another year one kid will be getting ready to graduate from high school, another will be wanting to get his driver’s license, and this last one will be even older, and as a girl, we will be dealing with a bunch of hormones and issues we will likely be discussing in a blog to be continued at that time. Someone start passing the wine now!
I also can’t pass this one off to her father. With the boys, I kind of looked at shaving, voice changes, and their hormonal stuff, and yelled “TAG, YOU’RE IT!” to my husband. Nope, this one is all me.
As much as I will miss my sweet baby girl being little, I cannot wait to see what she grows into and what she becomes.
So, Happy 10th Birthday my darling. May you grow old and wise. May you have confidence and a fighting spirit. May you be kind, but know when to stand your ground. May you have love for others, no matter their circumstance.
And may you always know how fiercely loved you are.
