If there is one thing that rocks me to the core, it is that this is all going entirely too fast. Their feet stretch and limbs stretch and their faces change every day. Firsts become oblivious and we watch them grow more and more... afraid to blink for the time might pass too quickly.
My baby girl has gone to school this year. She's never been away from me before, and I'm not sure who had a harder time adjusting, me or her. My daughter is incredibly smart and wildly social and immensely sensitive. I am so scared to lose her to the world. Some days I think I already have. She's so inquisitive and curious and hungry. I find myself changing with her - trying to keep up with what she needs at each moment from me. I am sometimes her friend, sometimes her adviser, sometimes her teacher and sometimes her listener. I am sometimes her map and compass. I am sometimes completely quiet. In the background, silently watching and cheering and ready for her to succeed and ready for her if she doesn't.
As she makes her way into her sixth year, I am finding myself at the gates of girlhood. A time when she begins to really voice her own opinions and show her own interests and we go back and forth between letting her take the lead and reining her in again. A time when a mother (or father) is precariously perched on the brink of childhood innocence, and wondering how exactly do we preserve it for as long as we possibly can. I only know one answer. We do our damnedest.
