Growing Up

Jonas and Tasha on the day they met

Our kids are growing up, right before our eyes. It makes me smile. It makes me cry.  It makes me feel old. It gives me hope. It leaves me breathless. Today it's giving me pause for thought.

Our family history isn't exactly typical. Jonas and Tasha didn't meet for the first time until Jonas was 3 and Tasha was 13. I'll never forget that day. Even though we didn't have a strong relationship with her for the first few years of our family, we made sure that they knew all about each other. Jonas has always had a picture of her in his room, as we do throughout the house. Even though they didn't live together, he's always been her little brother since the day he was born. The moment they met, he turned to us with a look of shock on his face and said "She's all grown up!"  She wasn't, of course, but in the eyes and mind of a three year old, she sure was.

That day seems like a lifetime ago.

At 22, Tasha is living on her own now, discovering all the challenges and joys of living with two feet planted in the grow-up world. I'm not sure which she's finding trickier to navigate - living without the safety net of coming home to either of her two family homes every night or living with her partner. Both are entirely new worlds for her and they both have a huge learning curve. When I listen as she tells me about what's going on in her life, I find myself smiling and thinking "Wow!"

At 9, our manchild Jonas seems to get a little bit older every day. He's discovering girls, the intricacies of friendships, the difficulty of trying to figure who you are in a world that is constantly trying to turn you into something. Every day there is a moment where I just say to myself  "Wow!"  Yesterday it was when he asked to walk home by himself and then followed it up with "Mom, now that I can walk home by myself, can I stay home alone sometime?" The answer was "yes" to walking home and "not yet" to staying alone. That conversation was quickly followed by the realization that those days are coming faster than we sometimes realize.

As we talked over breakfast on Sunday, we all realized that by the time BGB starts Kindergarten, Jonas will be starting high school and Tasha will be closing out her twenties. WOW! In a mere four months, we're going to start an entirely new journey. The baby is blessed with two awesome sibilings. I can't to see where her path takes her.

Cheers!