Summer Evening

Right now, I am listening to Amelia singing and talking to herself in her room. I think she is playing the music from Tad. She should be asleep by now but she spent the entire day at home playing with daddy and then, after I got home from work, me. It's more enjoyable and clearly not as tiring as playing at Nana's or going to school. And that's okay. Soon she will be a teenager and I will miss these years.

Earlier this afternoon Amelia also played computer games in her room. I let her play them in her room once last week due to bug spray in the kitchen - dang flies! - and now it's her new favorite place to play them, on her Pooh table, which she will outgrow soon, I am afraid. It seems she has suddenly outgrown a lot of things, and many more are very close to becoming a part of her past.

For parts of the past two days, I've been trying to clean out her closet and her room. Yesterday I found Uno Moo and asked Amelia if she thought it was too babyish for her. She said, "Yeah. It was more fun to play when I was 3 or 4." Such a grown-up sounding answer to me! Wow. Today I found her wooden number and alphabet puzzles. She had fun trying to make words with the letters of the alphabet puzzle, and large numbers using 2 and 3 of the number pieces. But I know those are outgrown, too. *sniff sniff* The time really does go by ...

She has just become such a little girl all of a sudden. Every day of her life I love her to death just the way she is, and that's how I feel right now. But I also can't believe I am finally coming out of the toddler/preschooler tunnel. I am sentimental about it, yet also happy to have survived and moved on. I think motherhood is full of these contradictions, although that's not quite the right word for it.