Pigtails

I don't know how it happened. Yesterday afternoon, my toddler turned into a little girl. No really...

Actually, I know exactly how it happened...I gave her pigtails. How did something so easy, so painless, change everything?

In all honesty, it's freaking adorable. I love them. However, it changed something in us both (ok, she couldn't have cared less); maybe it just changed the way I saw her. She sat still while I combed her hair; she watched in the mirror as I wrapped the tiniest hair tie around the tiniest pigtail. And when I was done, she stood up and went and picked up the last toy she had been playing with, not even realizing something was different about her. But I see it now. A little bit more every day. She's becoming more independent, more opinionated.

She runs ahead and doesn't look back. She climbs into chairs without my help. She picks out a book and can flip through it, and when that book is Eric Carle's Head to Toe she can even pound her chest like a gorilla or raise her shoulders like a buffalo on the right page at the right time without any prompting from us. And if she falls and skins her knees? She doesn't even cry. She's a tough one, that little girl of mine.

But even after this transformation happened right in front of my eyes, I was given a little reprieve last night. I was reminded that even though she is growing up way too fast, she still needs her momma. Whether it's a cold or the two new teeth coming in, she needed me to rock her last night and I savored every second. In fact, I probably rushed in there a little too fast and stayed a little too long, but I needed those quiet moments in the dark last night, holding my baby, rocking her, and having her need me.

Maybe a bit dramatic, but those pigtails threw me for a little loop yesterday...can you tell?

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