While You Were Sleeping

What has always amazed me about my kids is the way they seem to grow up overnight.
There are long periods when nothing much seems to change... And then, suddenly, I look at them across the breakfast table and something is different.
The look in their eyes. The sound of their voice.
A hurdle has been jumped: they have grown up a notch.

This week, the Growing Up Fairy has visited both of them.
On Tuesday morning, out of the blue, LB started to laugh and endear us with a "knowing" smile. He informed us that he no longer wished to remain horizontal while the rest of us were smugly vertical: we turned in surprise to see him struggling to a sitting position, working his little abs as though his dignity depended on it.
He also let it be known that he did not care to sit placidly in his chair, way down at ground level, while the rest of us munched cereal at table height ("nobody puts baby in a corner...").

On Wednesday, as I watched BB play with his good friend J., I realised that a line has been crossed. Suddenly, it's more fun for him to visit friends on Wednesdays than to hang out with Mum. Until now, Wednesdays have been our sacred mother-son quality time. But I get the feeling that the kind of quality BB seeks now involves little boys his own height (especially those with a large number of toy cars in their possession).
Somehow, from one Wednesday to the next, the roles have swung round. Maybe now I am the one who needs to feel his reassuring arms around me. Who needs to grab him by the waist and steal a kiss as he goes about his business.

Trouble is: the Growing Up Fairy doesn't visit us adults quite so often.
So we wake up feeling a little confused, wondering how to cope with these new, older, wiser, more assertive kids that wake up next to us.

We do our best. We're a little slower than them, sure, but if we follow their lead carefully enough, we manage to stay on the same path, hand in hand.