growing up

Yesterday I almost cried at church.

It was senior Sunday for the graduating seniors. We've only been going to this church for about seven months, and obviously we haven't been hanging out with the high school kids so I had absolutely no idea who any of the kids were. All the same when they started going through the slide show pictures of the kids growing up I got all teary eyed.

That is so out of character for me, I'm not a terribly emotional person and I rarely cry, but all of a sudden I had a flash of 14 years from now when it will be Molly's turn and it made me so sad. It will be her pictures flashing through, and what she is like now will just be a memory. She'll be all grown up.

Since she was born, I have been unable to imagine what she'll be like at any age beyond where she is right now. When she was a newborn I couldn't begin to picture a mobile toddler walking around and destroying my house. Of course she became that sweet, destructive toddler and I couldn't picture a big girl who dresses up as a princess everyday and talks my ear off about the most random things. Now she is that girl and I have no idea what the future holds. I have no clue what she'll be like, even a year from now. I mean, at this age I can imagine she'll look pretty much the same, and have the same personality and her development is so much slower now that I think she'll be pretty similar to now, but who knows.

I definitely can't picture an 8 or 9 year old and to picture a teenager just baffles me, my brain can't compute it. I'm surely not the only parent to be this way.

It's almost her birthday and she'll be 4 years old...I'll be the mother of a 4 year old. That's something else I can hardly wrap my brain around. When did this happen? Are you sure I'm not still just a kid myself? I mean sure, I've done lots of grown up things; get married, buy a house, get a bachelor's and a master's degree, but inside I still feel like the same person I always have, not like I've crossed over this imaginary road into adulthood. It's not like I would change anything though, I'm very happy with my life, I'm just blow away that this is where I am.

Pretty soon I'll post a picture montage of Molly over the last 4 years, and it will probably make me cry to make, but I can't wait to do it.