Growing Up

You know, if you couldn’t tell, I’m not a professional. Or wait. Am I? Nope. Ok. Now that that’s clear, moving on.

I work nights, so, I sleep during the day. We set stuff out, for our daughter to make herself breakfast and lunch, so I don’t have to cut my sleep back, from my already low amount of 6 hours a day. It started out, pretty bad, when I switched from 5 days a week, mon-fri 7a-3p, over to nights, 3-4 nights a week, 6pm-6am. And I like to do my shifts all in a row, so I can have longer stretches off. Well, when I first switched to nights, my daughter would try to wake me up, at the same times, every weekend. “Mommy, it’s 9:30, are you gonna get up and make me breakfast?”

I would respond, the same thing, every time. “What can you reach? Eat that.”

Well, I started to feel bad, because she wouldn’t eat anything, even though she can make things herself, she wouldn’t. (she’s 9 now and she was 8 when I switched to nights.) So, my husband and I talked about her turdiness, (word of the day, friends. Word if the day.) and what we should do to help her. I have to sleep. People’s lives are in my hands. So, we dump soup in a tupperware bowl, that she can put in the microwave. We make her lunches, and keep them in the fridge. And, we make sure to buy lots of fresh fruits and veggies, so she can have easy (healthy) snacks, while I’m in dreamland. 😉

She finally let’s me sleep, too. She would come in our room, and yell at the dog. (he chews on himself. I’m beginning to think it’s a nervous twitch.) But, she would jump on my bed, come in my room every 30 minutes from 9:30am-12pm, asking me when I was getting up. Now, she says “Hey, mommy. It’s 1 o’clock. I had breakfast, lunch, and 2 snacks. Time to wake up!” Haha!

It is truly amazing, how fast our little ones grow up. I feel like, it was just yesterday, when my little miss was asking for “cheekyboogas” and “fry fries”. Now, she wants steak.

I look through old pictures, and she would put her pull-ups on her head, and run around the apartment, and laugh. Now, she wouldn’t be caught dead, with under-roos on her head.

We would bake cookies, and I would make the frosting from scratch, and make the frosting whatever color she wanted (always pink), and let her frost the cookies. She never wore a shirt. She would stand there, in all her 3 year old glory, wearing only her undies, and frost 4 dozen cookies, like she was the master cookie decorator. Now, she has to wear training bras! GASP! Killmenow!

She would LOVE to pose for pictures. Now, she only let’s me take her picture, when she’s dressed up, and even then, she doesn’t smile. She sticks out her tongue or makes a goofy face. (like her Daddy!) And the worst, she will wiggle, and make every picture blurry.

She used to ask me to paint her finger nails, and toe nails. Not anymore. She does them, herself. She even makes designs on them. Just last week, she did a “French top” on her toes, but, she used a light green, and I didn’t have the heart to tell her it looked like she had a toe fungus.

The things that I am so happy she hasn’t grown out of. She still loves to snuggle. I hope she never grows out of that. That keeps me believing that she’ll be my baby girl forever.

It does worry me, though. She makes it a point, to remind me, once a week, that she is never going to move out of our house. Ha! I keep responding with “Tell me that, in 5 years.”

Hug your babies, tight! They grow up too fast.

❤