Gigi’s feet have finally grown. She has worn the same size sneakers for nearly a year, now that I think about it. I did think about it the other day, and I brought home a new pair—a half size bigger. “Oh!” she exclaimed, strapping the Velcro across her foot, “These feel so great!” Oops. It’s hard to keep up sometimes, particularly with her and with her brother.
There was a teacher at my little Lutheran school who would tell us, “Act your age not your shoe size!” I always understood it to mean, “act like a big girl, not a little girl.” But, thinking about it these days, it seems the opposite rings true as well, particularly for those still in toddler sizes. Gigi grew into a size nine and an half and very quickly (two weeks to be exact) into a ten. Some days she acts like she’s ten. “Act your age!” I want to scream at her. She’s five, not ten. She’s not old enough to tell me she hates me or that she’s bored or that she can’t sleep because she’s afraid of going to college, but she does. We spent an hour last week discussing how often she’d get to see me when she goes to college and whether or not I’ll still be her mother when she’s a mother. Spoiler alert: she wasn’t happy with the answer because “that means you’ll still be telling me what to do!”
Acting your age is hard. I wear a six and a half in most shoes; and some days, I act my shoe size, not my age. I yell because I’m frustrated. I say mean things. Sometimes I throw stuff. Meanwhile, my five year old acts like she's ten and tells me,"I'm just frustrated because I can't read it!"
RJ is eight; he wears a size three and a half. Right now, we have two recurring arguments. First, he took his special fancy soccer ball (a futsal to be exact) to school and promptly lost it. RJ loses everything. He is a live action version of the Peanuts character Pigpen. His backpack weighs at least fifteen pounds, and fourteen of those are made up of Hot Wheels. Every once in a while, he sneaks his blankie in too. While his contemporaries play video games and watch super hero movies, he covers his ears during Trolls when Princess Poppy is about to be eaten. Meanwhile, the fancy futsal is still missing on the school playground, despite very specific instructions that it should never leave the house and should never, not ever, in any circumstance, find its way outside. It found its way outside. RJ is concerned, but not overly. He's at an age where he prefers Hot Wheels to his Kindle, which brings us to the second argument of the week: reading. The boy is a fantastic reader, and he likes it. But, for now, this big eight year old prefers his mother to read his stories aloud, just like we did when he was three.
Act your age:
Sometimes, I catch them like this;
and I remember when he was three, not eight.
Sometimes, it's okay to act your shoe size.
Some days, she's my five-going-on-ten-year old. (I'm nearly-40-going-on-too-old-for-this-but-it's-happening-anyway.)
Some days, she's just her age; and she's perfect. (This is a picture of her and her bestie in the flowers; he's a pretty cool kid. "Mom," she tells me, "You can't marry your family, but if I marry him, he'll become my family. I want him to be my family too, so I think I'll marry him!" Slow down, girl; you're five; and even acting your shoe size, you're not quite ready for marriage yet.
Bedtime is a struggle. Somewhere between 9 and 10 that night, I gave up. She'd snuggled. She'd cried. She'd read in her bed, and she'd sneaked downstairs. Before I knew it, she had settled into an evening project, just like a ten-year-old should.
The next day, she was five again. Fairy wings and all.
But sometimes fairies act too big for their wings and wind up in the corner--because no one else can put my baby in a corner, but I sure will.
She wears a size ten; he wears a size three. She's five; he's eight. Most days, they act their ages; some days they act their shoe sizes. And, most of the time, they're just right.
