The Tween

Time is doing that slow, time-warpy thing again. The days fly by, but when I stop to realize what all I have done over the past week, it seems very much like Nothing. Scratch that. It IS very much like nothing. Laundry. Gardening. Picking up kids. Dropping off kids. Watching dive practice. Cooking dinner. Dusting (it's very dusty here). Run to Post Office. Grocery. CVS. Do you feel all drained and heavy-like yet? Then you get the gist.

(Time out for phone call.)

That was Noodle. Today is the last day of school. She ran out of money in her lunch account yesterday. Crap! Now I have to go make a lunch for her and take it to the school by 11:30. THIS is what I'm talking about. Really. The hard part about babies isn't the added expense, or the diapers or all-night crying jags. It's when they require constant maintenance/rides/trips to the mall to keep them "involved" and "cool" as teens and "tweens".

Noodle is a "tween". Not a kid, not a teen. But don't tell her that. She thinks she's an adult. Seriously. She's always been an "old soul", but D was like that too, and I just always attributed it to Tater and I being so young when D was born - there weren't any other kids around - and then when Noodle came along, she just got absorbed into our grown-up life. I started thinking about it a few weeks ago when a friend and I were talking about having a Girls Night Out. Noodle heard us and said, "I want to come".

"You can't. This is just for adults."

She looked right into my eyes and said, "I am not a kid."

And it occurred to me just then that she's really not. But, she's not 21 either. Bummer for her.