The invisible milestone

Smiling when they recognize you. Laughing. Rolling over. Crawling. Eating solid foods. Sitting up. Pulling up. Walking. Talking. Reading. Going to school. Riding a bike w/o training wheels. Losing a tooth. Driving a car.

The parenting books missed one: Bathing oneself.

"Em" can now clean herself without any help. She can turn on the shower. She can scrub off the dirt that accumulated in the last 24 hours. She can apply and rinse out shampoo and conditioner. She can turn off the shower and wrap a towel around herself. She can comb the tangles out of her hair.

Know what this means?

I can have dinner ready before her bedtime!

Now if she could only do her own laundry...

Kodak Moments

Being a mom of a 5-year-old, I like to have a lot of pictures taken of my little girl to show how much she's changed yet stayed the same. But, being the mom of a 5-year-old, I've learned that I can't always get the perfect picture. She'll blink in the first 3, smile like a monkey in the next 4, then smile beautifully for the last one, but turn away at the last second so all I get is a blurry blob that somewhat resembles my child. And I'm forever trying to come up with new phrases to get her to smile. "Say 'Happy Birthday!' Say 'Chuck E. Cheese!' Say 'Banana!' Say "Stinky Cheese!' Say 'I'm Outta Here!'" I love digital cameras because I can delete all those bad ones so I have room to take even more weird shots. But in the end, the ones I put on my computer are gorgeous, as few as they are.

I think I have found a happy medium to all this madness. Silhouette cut-outs from Disneyland! My daughter only has to sit still for a few minutes while the wonderful Cast Member works his/her magic with only a pair of scissors and a piece of paper. The cuteness of my child is caught forever in this little portrait, but the rolling of the eyes or the frozen smile ("Mom, are we done yet? My cheeks hurt!) are not. I can even get a cute little black frame to hang on the wall or stand on a shelf/piano/hearth/victrola/end table.

For Mother's Day this year, my wonderful dad took my gorgeous child to Disneyland to get a new silhouette done. The last one I'd had done was in late 2005/early 2006 when she wasn't even 2 yet. While that first one still looks like my Em, she's definitely changed since then. And this new one is fantastic! When looking at the two portraits side-by-side, you can tell it's the same child, yet somehow you can tell that she's older in the second one. I can't quite tell you how, but the first one clearly shows she still has that baby face. I decided to write the date of the new silhouette on the back so I can keep track later.

This may just be my new tradition with Em. Since we're Annual Passholders at Disneyland anyway, it makes sense. I haven't decided how often to get new ones done, but maybe I'll just do certain milestones. Starting 4th grade, starting 7th, starting 9th, High School graduation... Or perhaps after she looses her first tooth, rides her bike without training wheels, looses her last tooth (wisdom teeth aside), her first dance, passing her DMV test, prom...

Maybe I'll do them all. I think I can never have too many reminders of how my little one is not so little anymore.

I'm choking up, and it's only March!

Today my daughter is no longer my baby. She is growing up. I drove over to the public elementary school near my house to put her name in for Kindergarten Open Enrollment. The school she's "supposed" to go to is not far away, but this one is closer and gets higher test scores out of it's students (they won't assign this school to my neighborhood because it's across railroad tracks from us, and they don't want kids crossing tracks to get to school).

So, if her name gets picked from the lottery later this month, she'll start school on August 20!! That's only 5 months away! 5 months and my little girl is a big girl going to a big-kid school. Where did the time go? Can it really have been 3 years since I drove a U-Haul with 2 cats and 1 toddler down from Washington to start over? Has it been almost 2 years since my daughter got her very own Annual Pass to Disneyland?

It can't be time yet for Kindergarten! I'm not ready! She is, she's more than ready, but I'm not! She just learned to tie her shoes a few months ago! She's still on training wheels! She can't sleep anywhere without her blue receiving blanket! Where'd my baby go?

Luckily, she still lets me call her "my baby." She knows she's not a baby, but she knows she's my baby. And here come the tears....