"Bye Bye Baby, Baby Goodbye"

Posting this quickly before I loose my nerve and go and scoop her up and put her back in her crib.

Look who is in a big girl bed!!

For the first time in 11 years!! we are going to bed tonight without a "baby" in a crib in our room.

Yes.  I know how ridiculous that will sound to some of you.

What can I say? I love the baby stage and have hung onto it as long as I can!

Granted, I am 100% sure that she will wander into our room sometime between 11:00pm and 2:00am dragging all her paraphanalia and wedge herself between C and I (she's rotten!).  

So this shouldn't be a big deal.

But it is…..

Today I was having a particularly difficult Mommy day.

3 kids home sick (hand foot & month disease + a stomach virus = no fun!)

Tired mommy.

Needy kids.

One of those where I just felt like none of my kids were getting what they needed from me.  I was spread thin and feeling inadequate to meet the incessant needs of many small children.

I was feeling like a failure.  

So when Gigi decided to gather her lovies and march herself to the big girls room all on her own tonight, I gulped over the lump in my throat and let her call the shots.

Last week she decided she was done with diapers and potty trained in a day.

Today she ditched the crib and climbed into a big girl bed.

And my heart sings….and cries at the same time!

I have relished every, single, precious moment of her "baby-hood".  Gigi has been such a redeeming gift and blessing to get to "do a baby" one more time with a sense of "normalcy" that was lacking with our last baby.  With great joy I watch her growing and thriving and maturing.  But its also with a welling sense of "empty nest syndrome", I watch her stepping out in independence.  

Ive grown so accustom to having a baby on my hip and a toddler tugging at my hem…this is new territory, and Im not sure I know my place.  Feeling a little lost.  Sure I still have littles who need their mommy, but this is a new stage for me with more freedom….that Im not sure I like.

(goodness….Im going to be a mess when its time to let them go to college!) 

Needing fresh grace today for the unique challenges that are arising with children entering a new stage of life.  I have pre-teens now (when did that happen!?)  Determined to embrace the demeanor of the Proverbs 31 woman who is "clothed with strength and dignity and can laugh at the days to come".

Don't want to loose sight of the joy of today because I am looking back and wishing it could be so again.  Falling on grace to equip me for a new season…a new chapter of mothering.  Blessed beyond measure to take part in this high-calling of nurturing these precious 6 lives Im blessed to have call me "Mom"!

Clearly, she doesn't share any of my inhibitions!!  

Special thanks to my sweet friend Kathleen for making and sending Gigi her lovely "memory quilt" pieced together from all her outfits from her first year!  What a special gift!!