Peter Pan

During a long day, like yesterday or the day before...or the countless days before that, I am so jealous of my mother and mother-in-law. Both of them are single and free of babies and commitments besides work. Sure, they rescue their grown children bunches of times in crazy and new ways, our little family included, but for the most part they have a luxury of floating through this earth with very few people touching them or peeing on them or yelling at them or demanding of them...and I am SO. JEALOUS.

I fantasize and dream about the time when both of our girls are grown up and moved out and living their own lives at a distance. One where I can wake up and shower and take care of myself and fetch myself breakfast and maybe, if I am feeling like it, get my husband his breakfast, make his lunch for work...more whim-like than part of the grinding routine that clouds every day for me.

One where we can stay up later and only have the reprecussions of ourselves the next day, not the demands of toddlers and preschoolers as punishment. One where breakfast could be lazy and not immediately after you get up. Where coffee is hot and clean clothes stay clean until I'm sloppy and supper could be appetizers or toast or cereal and no one will complain or judge.

One where talking to the husband could be purely interesting and purely uninterrupted by shouts or singing or questions that never end.

Oh, the dream.

But yesterday I picked up Sophie, who is now 3-going-to-be-4, and she weighs around 30 pounds and is long and tall and has big feet and little girl hair and full sentences and deductive reasoning and I realized that those 3-almost-4 years have flown by. That just moments ago we were pregnant, then we were announcing, then contracting, then pushing, then c-sectioning, then holding our baby, then becoming parents HOLY-HELL-WHO-LET-US-BECOME-PARENTS.

And I looked at Lillian, who is toddler-going-on-2 and the same thing struck me.

Even though marathon days are all I know, the years are speeding by and soon Sophie will be in school and then Lillian and then they'll be moving out and then I'll cry.

So I asked Sophie to stop growing, to not get bigger, and I even offered to stop feeding her so we could hang on just a little bit longer.

Because the truth is I can't wait to be a free-moving adult in this world again...but I can certainly wait for my babies to get big and disappear into their own fog of being grown-up-ness. Oh, yes I can.