Slow Down!

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".

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.

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.

Maybe she can wear high heels for this event. Maybe.