What Do You Do When You Realize That Your Babies Are Growing Up?…

In the middle of writing a review, which I am desperately behind in at the moment due to the flu that kicked our houses ass last week, I hear my four year old’s  footsteps as she runs down the hallway to tell me that her “TV is broke”  and in the amount of time it takes her to make it from her bedroom to my computer desk, I realize that her footsteps sound so different, they didn’t sound like the baby footsteps that I have grown so used to hearing for the past few years, no, these are definitely different, yet also very familiar…

…that’s when I realize that my baby is no longer a baby.  And not only is she no longer a baby, but she’s growing up, into one of the Big Kids, and I’m not sure if I should be excited that I no longer have “babies” running around and that my diapering days are pretty much done, or if I should be sad that I don’t have babies running around anymore and that I don’t have to ever buy diapers again (at least not for a long, long while, hey SS and DT, y’all hear that?  no babies, no time soon…), it’s one of those times when being a mommy is hardest. 

I love that Lil Diva is growing up and she’s growing up into such a confident, smart, gorgeous, independent, amazing little girl who drives me crazy, but I couldn’t imagine living life without, but the fact that she’s my baby and she’s not really a baby anymore, that’s a another story.

Maybe it’s because somewhere deep inside I know that she’ll be my last, mostly because 6 kids is expensive enough, but also because my husband and I both agree that no matter how much we love babies (and I adore them), the smartest thing for us to do is concentrate on raising the ones we’ve got.  I mean, it makes all the sense in the world when you see it written in black and white, but it does little to comfort the part of me that needs them to be small so that I can protect  them forever. 

And to be honest, it’s not just Lil Diva who is growing up; Drama Teen, my oldest, will be 14 in a few months and in high school before I know it and my precious little Sporty Spice is already in middle school and growing up a little faster every day and Lil Man is already in kindergarten and he’s reading (I still can’t believe that the boy who barely knew his ABC’s 3 months ago is reading and writing and well, growing up…they all are and I’m sitting here watching it all unfold, wishing that I could slow time down a little, hoping that if I just hold on for a little while longer they’ll decide to stay little and be Mommy’s babies forever, but then I realize that the truest test of our mothering skills is letting our kids go out into the world and seeing what they do in it. 

I constantly question how I’m doing as a mom; “Do I curse too much?”, “Do I yell too much?”, “Am I sending the right messages?”, “Am I teaching them the right things?” and most of the time i don’t know the answers to those questions, none of us do really, but last week I got confirmation that I’m doing something right…

…last week was parent/teacher conferences here and aside from being told that DT and SS talk too much (wonder where they get that from?) I’m always proud of my kids when I leave, but after my meeting with Lil Man’s kindergarten teacher I was in tears…good tears mind you.  Aside from telling me how proud she was of Lil Man’s progress she told me that he was a pretty good, pretty special little kid…apparently there is a special needs child in Lil Man’s classroom that my son has taken under his wing, his teacher said that the little boy adores Lil Man and that Lil Man makes sure that the little boy gets in line when he’s supposed to and helps him whenever he can, sits with him at lunch and plays with him on the playground, she said that Lil Man was very protective over this little boy (which wasn’t a surprise to me since he’s so protective over his sister) and that I should be very proud of what a great kid I have…and I was proud, beaming even, but that wasn’t the conformation, that came later that night when I was tucking Lil Man into bed.  As I told my son how proud I was of him for being such a big helper to his friend he looked at me and said…

“Mom, I need to take care of that little boy.”  so I asked him why and he told me, “because, that’s what I’m supposed to do!”.  That’s when the tears came, right then, right in that moment I knew that I was doing an ok job, that I might not be Mom of the Year, but that I was raising four  amazing kids…and that’s enough for me.

Oh, the footsteps and Lil Diva growing up, that’s still new to me, I think I’ll play that one by ear…