I'm not exactly sure when it happened. Last I looked I was a scared silly brand new mom standing in the NICU looking at a very tiny, very sick baby and then last night the reality of being only weeks away from middle school crashed in.
Nothing has the power to accelerate the passage of time faster than being a mama.
This is the year of evens in our home. In just a few days the birthday chaos will begin. We will turn 2, 4, 8 and 12 in a span of roughly 4 weeks. It is simply shocking to me that this is happening.
How can this little tiny peanut be more than half man already? I really don't know. But. It's true.
His body may still be little, but he is not. Last night at his very first middle school event, we learned that he is about half the size of the average 8th grader. Literally. Height and weight. To my surprise and mild horror, he held his own among them. It seems that during a game of dodge ball he was not at all inclined to stand in the back and blend in. No, it seems his choice was to stand front and center and smack talk the big kids. We told him he's just lucky that right now when he turns sideways he disappears!
Somehow seeing the other kids getting big doesn't bug me the way this one does. Having The Littlest Mr. turning 8, getting ready for 3rd grade and tackle football doesn't seem like a huge deal. Watching him get closer and closer to being a black belt is just a cool thing. Seeing Little Miss learn her letters and numbers and get into the whole girly playmate thing is a treat. Even her never ending split personality tantrums of "Ina big girl, I do it!" to "Ina a baby, help!" seem to have a certain charm. Getting Little One over the hump of all he had to overcome has been special. He has a grin and giggle that melts hearts and to see him grow beyond most of his perceived limitations has been awesome.
But that oldest child.
That one that is simultaneously wrapped up in both a tweener world and a kid world brings a catch in my throat. I can't seem to reconcile this Jeckle and Hyde boy-man. One minute it's don't make me go to the basement alone and the next it's let me bike across town to the park alone. Then it's a girl thing and 10 minutes later it's a Toy's-R-Us catalog and what am I getting for my birthday. And then he remembers he wants a cell phone or an ipod. He still wants the fast food prize meals, but now needs to supplement with two additional cheeseburgers and extra orders of fries.
Sometimes he's all budding man, kindness and talents and humor. Other times he's tossing a two year old tantrum with the best of them.
I watch all these moments at once, like a film on fast forward and rewind it over and over in my mind, trying to see the "neat young man" that everyone else can see. In one blink I see the tiny baby being held in one hand by The Mr. The baby that was too small for even the smallest preemie clothes. The next blink he's that child that struggled for more than a year to learn to walk. Then he's the child that couldn't learn to hold a pencil or sit still in a chair or eat with silverware. Then he's the child we chased down medical rabbit holes. Somewhere, oddly enough, he came out of one of those holes remarkably well and whole.
And now he is this, a quirky, delightful, moody and boisterous young man child.
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