I'm Lindsay Ferrier, a Nashville writer with a passion for family travel, exploring Tennessee, and raising kids without losing my mind in the process. This is where I share my discoveries, along with occasional deep thoughts, pop culture tangents and a sprinkling of snark. Want to get in touch? Use the CONTACT form at the top of the page.
August 2, 2008
>Before my eyes, four-year-old Punky has gone from chubby toddler to… kid.
Oh, it was bound to happen, but still, it’s a wonder to witness. Her pudgy baby cheeks have grown thinner and she needs a belt now to hold up her shorts as her adorable pot belly begins to recede. I’m in awe, really, as she tells her father she’ll only eat her lunch “on one condition.” She doesn’t yet know what that condition is, but the fact that she used the phrase at all makes me want to laugh and cry all at the same time.
What’s hardest to take is that she is suddenly yearning for independence. Last week at the mall, she galloped ahead of us as far as she dared, turning every few seconds to make sure we were still in eyeshot. This is the same girl who, until recently, stayed so close to me in public that I often ended up tripping over her. Her requests to snuggle with me are growing fewer and farther between and since her brother isn’t much of a cuddler, I find myself from time to time sitting alone as I watch my two children, with empty arms and a dully aching heart. And while Punky used to spend much of her time in her own imaginary world, she now listens closely to our conversations, interjecting when she doesn’t understand.
“This is perfectly spiced,” Hubs said last night over dinner. Punky laughed.
“It is not, Daddy!” she corrected him. “Spice is what little girls are made of! Not dinner!”
A few minutes later, Hubs was attempting to explain how he cut his finger with a knife. “It’s a long story,” he told our 15-year-old, before quickly recounting how I’d put a bunch of old, cheap knives in the trashcan and he had stabbed himself on one while trying to pull the bag out of the can (In my defense, I told him the knives were in there).
“That wasn’t a long story, Daddy!” Punky chided him, shaking her head.
“She’s right,” I laughed. “It wasn’t a long story.” What joy and wonder she provides us, puzzling out the English language and all it’s colloquialisms right before our eyes.
And what joy she gives her 15-year-old sister, following her everywhere when she’s home, informing me that she’s just “hanging out” when I ask what they’re up to. When we take the family out now, she wants to hold her sister’s hand and go wherever she goes. When we’re home, her sister spends hours playing video games with Punky, reading to her, and bickering back and forth. To Punky, her sisters are not children and yet not adults. She adores them and yet sasses them in a way she’d never sass a grown-up.
These are the moments that unfold every day in a blended family, the moments that are beautiful in their simplicity and their lack of pretense. I get accused from time to time by my detractors of writing about being a mom “as if it’s never been done before.” But that, to me, is part of the beauty of the mommyblog. Each of us is witnessing the miracle of a child growing into an adult and it will never, ever get old, no matter how many times it happens.
This post originally appeared on Parents.com.
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