On our Sunday slow day at home two days ago, I spent the afternoon going between playing with Kaia, cooking, and cleaning in the kitchen. She’s gotten a lot more into coloring lately, so she’s been using the princess coloring book I got her from Asheville on the weekends and self-restricting her coloring to one page per day. When she does activities like this where we can’t really do it “together,” she’s been asking me to simply sit there with her and keep her company.
“Sit with me, mama!” she says in her sweet little voice.
It’s been really sweet — for her to just ask me to sit with her and just be with her. It’s also been an exercise for me in truly just being in the moment with her and not preoccupying my mind and body in thinking about or doing something else. When I sat there watching her color on Sunday afternoon, I thought about how the years will go so quickly and soon, she will not want me anywhere near her while she’s sitting doing anything. And while I thought about it, I just smiled at her.
Another activity she wanted to do was to use this digital doodle pad that my friend got her. She loves trading it back and forth with me while we write and draw different things for each other. After I drew several objects she requested, Kaia then said, “I’m going to write your name!” And she started spelling my name out loud, writing each letter very slowly and intentionally. And while she did write very big and run out of room writing from left to right a couple times while using capital letters, when she finally did it, it looked really good! I smiled so hard that my face almost started hurting.
“Pookie, you did it!” I yelled. “Very good, Pookie Pie! I’m so proud of you!”
She beamed at me. “This is Mama!” she shrieked back at me.
Soon, she’ll be writing full sentences, then paragraphs, then even essays. She’s getting bigger and more mature every day. I guess I am getting more “mature” every day, too: I looked down and saw two aging 40-year-old hands. The older she gets, the older I get, too. These are the special moments of witnessing her growth that hopefully will stay with me — even when she’s driving me mad by running like crazy on the street or refusing to hold my hand in big crowds. All these moments feel so fleeting.