A trio of reminders that the kid's growing up:
Yesterday, her (very long again) hair was horribly tangled up from two consecutive days at the pool. While she's generally patient when I struggle to brush out her hair, it's always been a lot of work and a lot of stress -- I try to avoid hurting her, she squawks, I think she's being oversensitive to squawk at that when I'm being SO careful, etc.
But she's been taking care of her own hair since it was cut about a year ago. (The decision to cut it was made because of just this sort of situation. Long, thick, curly hair + pool = chaos.) So instead of it being a Huge Big Deal, she took a shower on her own, washed her hair on her own, and brushed it out on her own. All taken care of, no stress. Whew. That was nice.
*****
Last night she had a terrible time going to sleep, not sure why. Heat, general emotions about school ending (she's always sad at the end of the school year), busy weekend, not sure. She didn't get to sleep until 'round midnight. She really needs at least eight hours of sleep or she reliably has health issues -- her teacher knows this and she's come in late for this reason probably 5 or 6 times this year. She's missed very little school due to illness so it's a reasonable tradeoff. (Usually not more than an hour late, and since she usually finishes her school assignments very quickly, she makes up anything she missed with no problem.)
I knew that there was an event at school today, she was the captain of a team that had participated in the early stages and she said that she hadn't made it to the finals. So she'd just be observing the finalists compete today. Didn't seem that urgent.
I wrote the email to her teacher this morning saying that sozlet would be late today, as per usual, not normally a problem. Got an email back about 15 minutes after school starts: "Sozlet 's team is in the finals so it's better if she can get here ASAP." ACK!
So we rushed around getting ready (it was a world record, about 15 minutes from eyes opening to out the door, helped somewhat by her happiness that she was in the finals after all -- not sure what happened there), and in the car on the way to school I said that she should prepare herself for her team being mad at her for being late. She said, "Well, I don't want to blame you, but..."
I cut her off and said "I'm glad you're not blaming me because I did everything I could to get you to sleep last night and you kept fighting it, you told me you weren't in the finals so I didn't think you had to be at school right on time today, plus last night you BEGGED me to let you sleep late this morning."
Looked in the rearview mirror expecting protest but she was looking thoughtful and said, "You're right." That's it.
Whether it was sincere or she's just figured out how to handle me when I'm on the edge of getting seriously pissed off, it was strikingly mature.
*****
Yesterday we went to a party, three couples + three kids (including sozlet). She spent most of the time with the kids, would hang around with the grown-ups and chat now and then. We were having a discussion about working + motherhood -- two of us were moms who had worked and became stay-at-home moms, one is a medical doctor who is thinking of starting a family but has reservations. I was talking about how difficult the transition from working to motherhood was, especially since my job was so intense but so rewarding. I made things happen in a very concrete way on a daily basis, and would get heartfelt thanks ("Thank you for changing my life"). Whereas with a baby, I was putting all of that effort into things, but the response I'd get was "wah wah wah."
I was talking to the grown-ups but sozlet was in the vicinity, and she stood up, caught my eye, and said "Thank you" very seriously, then went back to playing with the littler kids. Everyone cracked up.
*****
and grown-up in another way -- she can text on her iPod, and her friends sometimes commandeer their parents' cell phones to text my Blackberry. So yesterday she was sitting on the couch with the iPod in one hand and the Blackberry in the other, simultaneously texting with friends. (There were 28 messages on the iPod yesterday morning. "Sozlet r u there?" "Hello??" "r u there?????" "o>0>0>0>0>0>" "sozlet" "where r u?" "we need to go to the pool" "ask your mom about pool" "r u there????")
Hope so. I can't remember how old I was when I saw it but I didn't remember it being quite so raunchy.