Five years ago I was a very pregnant 17 year old. Trying to remain patient as I miserably waiting for the arrival the sweetest girl I've been blessed to know. (And I say miserably because both pregnancies were very hard on me and my body. Doesn't mean they aren't worth it). Everyone always said "don't blink. It goes too fast" and I'd just laugh and say "okay". I had no idea what they meant. Because up until this point of my life, everything had always dragged on.
Here we are about a month away from Jordyn's fifth birthday and I don't know how we got here, so fast. It's bittersweet. There's no other way to describe it. It's amazing to watch your children grow and learn. At the same time, it breaks my heart a little to know that each day they become less and less dependent on me. They're not babies anymore. Nikolai is a toddler and Jordyn is a KID. A child. She's not a baby. She's not a toddler. She's not a preschooler. She's a kid. An almost five year old kid. And I just don't know how this happened.
Watching my kids grow, learn and become their own individual person is one of the most amazing things I've been able to witness. Truly, it is.
Parenting is terrifying though.
When they're born you worry about how much you're going to fuck this all up. You worry about SIDS, about co sleeping or crib sleeping, you worry about bottle or breast feeding, you worry about when they're sick, or how to prevent sickness, you worry when they take their first fall, or when they decide they're big enough to climb a moutain (practically), you worry about all this little stuff. And it doesn't seem to ever stop. As they get older the worries change.
With Jordyn starting school this fall, I have all new fears for her. Will she make friends easily? Will she get made fun of? Will she fit in? Will she get bullied? Will kįds be mean to her?
And it scares me. No. It terrifies me. Jordyn is an extremely sensitive child. She wears her heart on her sleeve and her emotions have always been bigger than she was. And I know school will be different for her. She's beautiful and smart and funny and talented and simply amazing. But I'm her mother. I'm her biggest fan.
I'm worried that other children won't give J the chance to show them what I see.
Instead of worrying about the other kids, I hope I can teach J that there's more to life than what kįds at school think. But we can't pretend that school isn't a major part of their lives for the next 12 years.
I hope that J loves herself enough to not care about the opinion of others. I just hope that at the age of five, she can see what I see.
