My Growing Girl

At this moment, Hayden is pushing the pink music button on her Leapster that repeats the alphabet song at least 50 trillion times as she gets as huge smile on her face and yells “c” and points and swings her little pointer finger in the hair. Her brown, eyes light up the size of Texas and her body starts shaking from the excitement. Her golden blonde, curly hair hangs over her eyes because I haven’t had a chance to tame it yet. Her little mouth takes on the shape of a circle and her eye brown lift as high as they can go. Then she starts shaking her little bottom and swinging her arms and then starts clapping. This only affirms my overwhelming feelings from yesterday…,my baby girl is growing…TOO fast.

Yesterday I had a little “mom” breakdown and wasn’t quite sure how to handle it. Little Hayden and I got up extra early, as usual and went out to the pool to eat our breakfast and then take our morning swim. It was a little hard to feed her yogurt with her crazy hair covering her precious face, so I got a rubber band to pull it back. I noticed her hair was getting long enough to probably put in a little ponytail, so I thought I would try it. Low and behold it worked. However, I was not ready for the emotion that would take over when she turned around to look at me with her chocolate brown eyes.

It wasn’t the eyes of my “baby” anymore. It was the eyes of my growing toddler. It was the eyes of a little girl who is becoming more and more independent, which I am not totally ready for yet. It was the eyes of a precious spirit who is gaining her own personality.

My heart sunk as I realized that she is starting to need me less and less, and she is not even 2 yet. She doesn’t need to be held like a baby anymore. She has been rid of her bottles for almost a year. She doesn’t need me to “spoon” feed her anymore. She doesn’t need me to carry her everywhere, but instead walks, well…runs, on her own 2 feet. She understands everything we say, but decides on her own if she wants to listen to it. She has more energy than the average toddler. She is starting to talk and use her words instead of just throwing fits. Her big heart is evident when Rori or Colt cries and she wants to hug them to make their tears disappear.

I am not ready for all this change at once…at all. I know there will always be a part of her that will need her mom, but it is hard not knowing HOW much she will need me.

This trip has really opened my eyes to all these changes I am seeing in my little girl and while it is awesome to watch and be proud of, there is still a little piece of my heart that wants to hold on to the present and slow down time.

Maybe I am just having such a hard time with all this change because I see so much difference between Hayden and Colton in the way the “need” me. Will I ever be ready to watch my baby girl grow into a little lady?

I think the reason why I have been writing about her so much is because I don’t want to forget a single part of her childhood. I don’t my memories to fade. This so-called thing called parenting is just a little hard. And just when you think you are handling quite well, I am hit in the face with new emotions, new circumstances, new EVERYTHING!

On another note…we are continuing our fun here in Arizona. Yesterday we got to go to a Wildlife Zoo on the west side of Phoenix. Although it was extremely hot, we still had a great time. The highlight of the day was getting up close and personal to a young lion, a cheetah, and a black panther. Mom, Jamie, and Kristen took the babies inside a little café to cool down the babies while Nic tested how close he could get to a growling cheetah above his head with Sarah in his ear egging him on, Hayden and I ran up and down the aisle as a the lion chased us back and forth, and my father laughing at us. Hayden did a fabulous job and had a wonderful time. Hayden is now the darkest out of all of us…we realized this after changing her diaper and she escaped to run around the entire house with her little behind jiggling with all her freedom. We then went back to the house and relaxed the rest of the night with a dinner at home. Adam spent some time wrestling with Hayden and spinning her round and round until they both fell to the ground. We laughed, and laughed some more. We watched The Last Song and watched a storm roll in as we sat outside on the porch. The rest of the night consisted of ice cream and Friday Night Lights Season 4.

It is already a beautiful day here and is now 7:30 am. Hayden is itching to go back outside and play her little heart out.