Chubby Stubbies

Summer of 2007

I have to admit that I haven't been one of those mothers who looks at each passing birthday with bittersweet regret because my girls are getting older. Until recently.

I suppose it's because we had three children in four years (with no twins), which means that Trent and I have had a baby or toddler in the house since 2003. Now I find myself confronting Reagan's third birthday next month, and with it, the realization that she is officially exiting the cute toddler phase of life. This is perhaps best evidenced by the disappearance of what I like to call her "chubby stubbies." Or, for those of you who don't speak Alabamian (I may not have grown up there, but I was born there, and raised by a mother who grew up there, so it is my birthright to make up words and names as I see fit), her cute little legs which have been short and endowed with baby fat since the day she was born.

Yesterday, Reagan climbed up on the kitchen counter as she was trying on her new swimsuit, and I was struck with the sudden and painful realization that her chubby stubbies have all but vanished (before her third birthday, even)--replaced by longer, leaner, more (dare I say it? Please don't make me) grown-up versions of her two lower limbs. No longer stubs; no longer endowed with baby fat.

I was suddenly and unexpectedly overcome with an overwhelming sense of sadness and nostalgia. It was all I could do to muster the strength to whisper the words, "don't you go growing up on me!"

February, 2009