{"id":8036,"date":"2013-10-15T21:35:43","date_gmt":"2013-10-16T02:35:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/?p=8036"},"modified":"2013-10-15T21:42:00","modified_gmt":"2013-10-16T02:42:00","slug":"the-changing-face-of-our-seven-and-a-half-year-old","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/2013\/the-changing-face-of-our-seven-and-a-half-year-old\/","title":{"rendered":"The changing face of our seven-and-a-half-year-old"},"content":{"rendered":"

May I share a pet peeve about parenting that might implicate a few of you? When you have young children, people often say, “Oh, they grow up so fast!” And I’ve always found that to be absolutely irritating. No offense.<\/p>\n

When our daughters were babies, I remember hearing this kind of advice a lot. “Cherish these days with them — they’ll be teenagers before you know it and you’ll just be picking up their dirty socks as they walk out the door!” Especially having two daughters, we have often received warnings from seasoned parents, who entreat us to beware of the cold and difficult moods that inevitably appear on a girl’s thirteenth birthday. (In truth, I myself was a moody, disgruntled teenage girl. But does that mean it has to be so?)<\/p>\n

What I find most difficult about the charge to appreciate the days with our young ones is how I am confronted, jarringly, with anxiety over my own mortality and the fleeting nature of childhood — all while I was just minding my own business, doing the grocery shopping or similar. I often feel like Ramona Quimby, who, when told by her sister to “grow up,” responds with an agonized, “CAN’T YOU SEE I’M TRYING?” I echo Ramona’s pain — I’m TRYING! I’m doing my very, very best to soak up every moment.<\/p>\n

\"Sister<\/a><\/p>\n

So, ever since those baby days, I have been working my tail off to cherish our time as parents. I “journal”:\/news\/2012\/journaling-in-the-round\/ every night. I hug our daughters as much as they’ll let me (and, thankfully, that is a lot). We work on enjoying the present moment as a family, and we give thanks for our time together. When people talk about how quickly our children have grown, I usually agree with them to be friendly. But in my more honest moments, you’ll hear me say, “Sometimes it seems like it is going quickly, but most of the times it feels like it has taken just about seven-and-a-half years.”<\/p>\n

But we’re encountering a game-changing event here. The loss of Lucy’s final front top incisor.<\/p>\n

Lucy has been on the slow side of her peers when it comes to “losing her teeth”:\/news\/2012\/contest-losing-lucys-loose-tooth\/, and, truthfully, I haven’t minded too much. It has been interesting to see her friends grow giant adult teeth in their juvenile mouths and watch their whole faces change. Lucy lost her baby-fat cheeks awhile ago, but those little milk teeth have kept her looking just a tiny bit like the “baby I met”:\/news\/2007\/one-tooth-smile\/ about seven years ago. <\/p>\n