“You are growing up so fast!” Sadie, my just-turned-7-year-old, says to her little sister Josie as she pedals down the driveway on her two-wheeler.
“You are getting so smart!” Josie, my 5-year-old, says to her little sister Adelaide as she proudly uses her big-girl potty.
“You are so big, my wittle bwudder!” almost-3-year-old Adelaide says to her almost-6-month-old baby brother as he grabs for his rattle.
My children are constantly noticing and commenting on the milestones that each one of them achieves. They celebrate together, high-fiving each other and giving themselves big pats on the back. Watching them learn, grow and change together is bittersweet.
Sometimes, Adelaide spends the morning cuddling in bed with her closest-in-age sibling, pulling the covers over their heads and giggling when he gives her one of his drooly grins. “You are my vewy favowite fwiend,” she declares, then kisses him on top of the head and gives him a squeeze.
Later, Josie holds him on her lap with pillows all around her (“just in case he wiggles away and I accidentally drop him, Mommy. I do not want him to bang his little head!”).
When she doesn’t know I’m looking, I catch her gazing at him with the same adoring look she gave him in the hospital the night he was born. It’s like she’s never seen anyone so wonderful in all her five years. It melts my heart.
Soon after, I overhear her ask Sadie, “Do you remember when you were 4 and I was 3 and Daddy used to pick both of us up at the same time, you know, one in each arm? (Sigh). Yeah, those were the good old days.” I laugh when I hear this, wondering how someone so young can already be talking about the “good old days.”
Sadie, who sometimes seems older than her years, agrees with her sister. Then she sits and stretches out her long legs so her baby brother can lie down on top of them. She holds his teeny hands in hers and coaches him on sticking out his tongue: “Did you see that, Mom? I taught him that!”
Proud of this accomplishment, yet dealing with some unfamiliar emotions, she confides that she doesn’t really want him to grow up. She says with a sigh that she still remembers when Adelaide was a little baby, and it makes her kind of sad. She says that years go by really fast, and she liked it when life was easier back when she was a baby. She says she wishes she could stay a kid forever.
Teary-eyed, I say “Me too.”
I admit that some days I want to hide in the bathroom with the door locked until naptime. But I am not ready for them to grow up! Not yet. With my sweet – and probably last – baby boy, I really want to make his baby-ness last. I feel the same as Sadie feels, even though I’m already a grown-up. Sometimes I long for how things used to be, for the way I used to feel when I was a little girl. I want to grasp every minute – every second – of their quickly passing childhoods.
I think about Josie changing her baby brother’s diapers (but not the poopy ones), Sadie helping to give him baths and Adelaide playing peek-a-boo with him. I think about how even though they are still little girls, they are already showing signs of maturity. Even though they don’t leave me very much to do with the baby except nurse him, I think of one more thing:
Cherish this.
This is my column for www.mentorpatch.com published on May 1, 2011.
