Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Growing Pains

Kate very willingly parted with her beloved pacifiers (papi’s) today. It’s something that we’ve been working towards for over a year now. My plan (notice “my plan” not her plan) was to ditch the papi’s before her 2nd birthday. However, I quickly found out that she wasn’t ready and I feared that if I pushed her too hard, that it would result in years of very expensive therapy. I could picture it, she’s sitting on a red sofa pouring her heart out to a stranger about how I ruined her life. No thank you!

So we waited…and waited…and waited. Now 1 month away from her 3rd birthday, she was finally willing to discuss the idea of finding a very desperate baby who is down on their luck and in need of a papi. My sweet little humanitarian!

When I was sure that she was serious about the idea and that she had emotionally detached herself enough from the papi that it wouldn’t result in permanent emotional scaring, I took her into the infant room at Primrose (her daycare). We analyzed all the babies, the sad, downtrodden, designer dressed babies who needed nothing else than a good papi. She decided that she was ready.

We packed up all the papi’s that night and she came into school the next morning cradling them in her arms. We walked into the infant room again and a baby boy crawled up to us. He looked her in the eye and then flashed his very best million dollar smile. That’s when I knew that she wasn’t turning back. She placed each papi on the counter one-by-one, very softly and gently, then she turned around to leave the room (stealing one last look at the million dollar smile) and it was done!

No drama, no tears…we’ll not exactly. Here’s the problem. I had spent a year preparing Kate to part with her papi’s but I hadn’t spent even five minutes preparing myself that my baby girl was leaving behind a significant part of her childhood. My baby was no longer a baby. GASP!

I fought back the tears as I told her how proud of her I was. I’m still fighting back the tears writing this now. I cannot begin to express how extremely proud I am of my sweet girl. She is growing into such an amazing young girl and I admire her compassion and generosity. Way to go Kate!!!