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| We're not ready to stop the ride or get off. We (and by we I mean mom only) just want it to slow down! |
It's 4 a.m. on a Wednesday and I jump out of bed as usual with
good intentions of stretching, and watching the sun rise with a cup of coffee
in hand while inhaling deeply and smiling foolishly as if I'm in a Folger's
commercial.
But you know that
doesn’t happen.
What really happens
is that I trip over a pillow that has been kicked to the floor during the
precious few minutes I’ve had to sleep, swear quietly so as not to wake the
little giant known as my daughter and pray I can have just a few freaking minutes
to myself before she demands cereal we don’t have in the pantry. So instead of
using this time to meditate and garner my strength, I tiptoe downstairs where I
begin to lovingly stroke my Chinese boyfriend - otherwise known as "remote
control".
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| It seems like yesterday, but time is going much too quickly. |
“My precious,"
I think.
I could spend this
time doing some yoga like poses and becoming a better person. But as I am going
through withdrawal from being forced to watch kid-friendly programming 90% of
the time, I decide instead to rot my brain. I time it just right so that I can
quickly hit the volume down button as the TV is powering up because you know my
child must blast the Disney channel at ear-splitting setting #25 so as to be
able to hear the oh-so-important programming over her own constant commentary
on how much she loves "Just Kickin' It" and that despite never setting
foot in a dojo she could totally ‘kick it’ herself.
It’s not long before
I start to feel guilty and it’s not because I’m using this rare down time to
drool on the couch while an episode of "2 Broke Girls" softly murmurs in the
background. I’m feeling little pangs of guilt as my eyes flick constantly to
the stairs and my ears strain to hear the pitter patter of little feet on said
stairs.
I am feeling guilty
because I should not be watching such a show in my house with a child around.
Hilarious as it is, this particular episode is about HERPES and I can’t
concentrate and enjoy the single gal hilarity as I am contemplating how I might
explain STDs to a 7-year-old should she wake up.
I am feeling
guilty because this is yet another thing a young kid should not have to think
about or even hear about.
Lately I’ve been
spending a lot of time remembering way back to when I was Chris’ age. I don’t know if
I am blocking some trauma or if I was really naive, but I really don’t
remember knowing as much about the “real world” as my child does now.
Ultimately I have decided that things just move much faster these days.
Chris is very
tall for her age and at seven she could easily pass for 10. As funny and amazing
as it is to watch her growth spurts, we’ve joked often about plying her with
coffee and cigarettes, and piling bricks on her head to stunt her growth. Add
to this height the fact that she has been raised around adults and talks (or
fakes it) like she is wiser than her few years, and I wonder what kind of
supersonic roller coaster ride we’ve boarded.
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| These cute two-pieces used to be much more cute and a lot less scary. |
Recently we had
to go swim suit shopping. First of all, this is yet another area in which things
are moving much, much too fast. Chris gravitates – as all the other young girls
apparently do – towards the string bikinis that barely cover her private
bits. So buying a suit is understandably
an epic battle to balance age-appropriateness with size availability. Because
of her size, very soon we will have to leave the Hello Kitty section and shop
in the junior department. If you're not familiar, let me just point
out that as the girl’s sizes get larger the amount of fabric shrinks in order
to ensure that young teenagers appear as cute and sexy as possible. Fantastic.
It is a Herculean task to find a kid-friendly swim suit that fits
Chris’ very long torso. This leaves me simultaneously overjoyed and dismayed
that she can’t fill out the top of a larger suit that is long enough for her
body. And I refuse to buy one of these itsy-bitsy bikinis that have ruffles
strategically placed to accentuate curves.
We finally found a two-piece that I agreed
wasn’t too racy because it was a sporty suit for athletic-type pre-teens,
which is perfectly fine in my opinion. As she tried it on, Chris proved that
her mouth is older than her years when she said, “This top feels funny. I don’t
like the way it fits. The bottoms, however, feel delightful.” She's spending too much time with Grandma.
All I could do
was stifle a snicker and tell her we’d have to try another store with other
one-piece suits.
The adult choices
for much-too-young children don’t end there.
The other day I
found myself ranting in the children’s shoe department because roughly half of
the girl’s summer sandals have wedge heels. These are basically high heels, and
in my opinion there is absolutely no reason a seven-year-old should be wearing
high heels unless they are the dress-up plastic kind she wears with a Disney
dress for Halloween and cause her to complain about her aching feet and thus give
me hope that she will forego the future pain for sensible footwear.
Of course Chris
is gagging for a pair of these sandals and I have told her no so many times
that even I am not beginning to understand why she is the only kid she knows
who doesn’t have a pair. I was beginning to wonder if I might have Amish
tendencies when I noticed a mother lingering nearby with her infant in a
stroller and was convinced she was gathering evidence to report me to the
fashion police.
But when Chris
began her begging anew, the woman slowed her stroller and shocked me with some
solidarity.
“I wouldn’t buy
you those high-heeled sandals either, honey,” she told Chris, who fortunately
didn’t roll her eyes at a stranger’s unsolicited advice. “You’re much too young
for those shoes and they will make your feet hurt anyway. I won’t buy them for
my little girl either.”
Granted her
little girl was probably around 12 months, but I appreciated her words
nonetheless.
In fact, I wanted
to jump up and down in relief that I wasn’t Amish after all. I am just a mother
who realizes that time flies much too quickly. One second they’re wearing an
adorable princess two-piece suit with a swim diaper, and the next you’re
praying the strings don’t pop off when they dive in the pool.
It’s too fast.
Let’s turn back the clock about 30 years so
Chris can get a little taste of what real childhood is like. We can start with
the sandals. Then we’ll talk about my TV programming.
Until then, I will continue to wake up at 4 a.m. so I can keep her from the real adult truth.
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| Maybe she can wear high heels for this event. Maybe. |
