A little mommy.

This week Selina turned 4!  I am blown away that I have a 4 year old. I feel like this next year is going to fly by and then she will be in Kindergarten. As I am writing this, I am also looking at elementary school comparisons. Elementary schools!!! I still remember when I was in kindergarten, how can I have a child that is going there so soon?
One morning, a few days ago, I was driving along a road sipping my coffee listening to music on the radio. And for a split second, I forgot I had kids and I felt like I was commuting to work. That moment of bliss was broken up by my girls fighting in the back seat. My mind went zooming from a newly wedded full-time worker to a full time mom with two children and an 8 year anniversary around the corner. It was freaky and almost winded me! I caught a glimpse of Selina in my rear view mirror. My baby, turned into a little girl, turned into a big girl amazes me. Her face is maturing and she carries conversations with me effortlessly. I always wondered what she would tell me, and now sometimes I wish she would be quiet for two seconds!
One conversation we had recently took me by surprise because it was something I wasn't expecting to talk about for a while. It went a little like this:

Selina:  Mommy, where was I when you were little?

Me: You weren't here yet. Mommy and Daddy got married then you were a twinkle in Daddy's eyes. A while later we had you!

Selina (cups her chin in her hands and looks intently at me) : How?

Me (blank stare. how to explain this to a 4 year old? ): Um...um...well...Ok, it's like this; Mommy has mommy parts, and Daddy has daddy parts and they come together and voila a baby.

Selina: Oh! And then you put my bones in!!

After this I realized she thinks mommy and daddy have a baby parts factory and we manufacture children. And I suppose it's a little something like that :)

Here are some of the words/phrases Selina says that I adore -
"Hostabill" = Hospital

"Bideo" = Video

"Hopsicle" = Popsicle

"The water is grumbly" = Boiling water

"Keira blessed you'd on me" = Keira sneezed on me

"That's unbelievable"  this one cracks me up because Selina says it all the time. Mommy says, "That car cut me off!" Selina responds, "That's unbelievable!"

"Hair tree" = weeping willow

"Blutterfly" = you know :)

Selina is also on bad word patrol. Ryan and I don't use 4-letter no no's, but other words like "stupid/hate" are no longer words to be used in the home.  I quickly realized using those words are terrible once you've heard them from the mouth of your child! I can't say "Those stupid gas prices, I hate them!" anymore :) Well, the way we tackled getting Selina to stop saying those words is by telling her that they are not good words and if she hears mommy or daddy saying them she can tell us not to use those words. Anyways, I used the word "stupid" in front of the bad word patrol and she quickly called me to account. And you'll love this fellow parents, I basically told Selina that my frustration with a certain incident warranted the use of the word stupid and that she is not my mother (digging myself a deep hole right now). She just looked at me and said, "I am a small mother. Don't say stupid." And that was that.

Last Tuesday I picked up Selina from school and got a good chuckle when I had to walk by chalk outlines of children all over the sidewalk. It looked like a crime scene in a 4 years old world. All the chalk outlines had happy faces drawn on :)
I love going into the preschool and seeing what's going on. I will never forget how a stand-up comic compared preschool to a college party (can't remember the dude's name or exactly what he said but it went something like this ) "Preschool is like a college party. Kids passed out on the floor, others stumbling around, talking but not making any sense, chairs tipped over, toys are trashed..."

This is my last year that Selina is with me almost all the time and then off to kindergarten she goes. I guess with every stage we go through together, I try my best to enjoy what we have now and balance that with what I get to look forward to in the future. That's about the only way I can cope with how fast the time goes!

I love you so much my little Selina!!

xoxoxoxox   - Mommy