A week from today, my baby, my Little Miss Moo/Princess Moo/Schmiggie/Miggie will turn seven years old. SEVEN. I mean, being the mother of a recently-turned-ten-year-old made me feel old enough, but somehow, illogically, being the mother of a seven year old and knowing she’s our youngest…my heart crept one step closer to pacemaker status, I’m sure of it.
When she was born, I was just barely 22 years old. And I already had three years of parenting experience under my belt. Good golly I was young! In Moo’s first year, we went through an autism diagnosis (Master J), a MAJOR career reconfiguration (Talented Hubby), a six month training stint living away from home during the week, home on weekends only (TH), therapy playgroups, speech assessments, medical appointments - the list goes on. At one point we had a special needs preschooler, a toddler and a newborn and I didn’t drive, requiring me to walk/bus it to all these various things. Thank God Moo was breastfed and therefore highly portable!
A lot has changed since Moo was born. I went from being the sole feminine influence in three boys’ everyday lives to being the mother of a honest-to-goodness Little Girl. The day the ultrasound technician pointed out the ‘two lines’ indicating her ‘girly bits’, I was beyond thrilled. My boys are healthy and happy and for that I am supremely grateful but a little girl to shadow me in the kitchen, to teach how to (badly) knit, to snuggle up watching Anne of Green Gables with? I do believe I cried, goop-covered belly and all. Later, at her birth (with the camera rolling) I was heard to say, repeatedly, “Is she still a girl?” like I expected her gender to have changed in the five seconds since I last looked (and as an aside, my GOODNESS ‘down there’ really DOES stretch like a turtleneck, huh? I’d never seen it from the southern perspective before! LOL)
Afterward, when I’d showered - and it was a great birth, the best of the lot - and returned to my room, I lay on my hospital bed. I savoured the sheer bliss of lying directly on my back, something I’d not been able to do with any degree of an open airway since around my fifth month, and proceeded to unwrap my ‘Christmas Present’. I laid a cloth nappy on my bare belly - just enough to cover me in case of an, uh, ‘meconium explosion’ on her part - and stripped my new baby down. I held her, vertical monkey-style, her raven head resting between The Milk Bar, the bare skin of her touching my skin, and I covered the both of us up with a blanket. We rested.
She smelled so good, that new baby scent. I kept stroking her deliciously curly hair - we’re all ruler-straight around here - and shaking my head in disbelief. We were warm and cozy and soon fell asleep. Talented Hubby must have returned from whatever part of the hospital he’d escaped to at some point because I woke to find Moo suitably diapered, dressed and fast asleep in her hospital crib and I’d had my pyjamas re-buttoned, LOL. I honestly can’t remember a time where I’d felt so content.
But my little girl, who has now officially passed the age my sister was when I - the ’surprise’ baby - was born, is so big and tall and, well, grown-up. It’s sad! With each passing year we mourn the loss of another childhood icon. No more Little People. No more buying baby dolls (not that she has fully outgrown them yet - just that she already has plenty!), and no more gorgeous little toddler/preschool/kindergarten aged clothing. Soon we’ll be saying goodbye to My Little Ponys and Cabbage Patch Kids. Never again will I buy a 000 sleeper. Never again will we have to install a baby carseat. Never again will The Milk Bar be open for business!
To make matters worse, tonight Moo lost her third tooth in two weeks and the second of her two front teeth. Even her baby teeth are dropping like flies! The sight of her in all her gappy glory, grinning from ear to ear, made me realise that she has well and truly entered into a brand new phase of childhood.
I am so not prepared for this!
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