‘I’m no baby, I am a big boy!’

‘I’m a big boy’, he tells me. I call him ‘baby’ and I tell him that I will always call him baby. Even when he becomes the tall young man that his feet is telling me he is bound to grow into, he will still be my baby.

Perhaps the intensity of parenthood, which no one got even close to describing to me before I became one, with it’s fierce love and immense challenges amongst many other feelings, means the moniker ‘baby’ is a unique reminder of that time. Also, I like saying the word. So he might as well set his expectations now.

‘Do you want me to stop growing?’, he asks me. The question on his lips, because those are the words that came out of my mouth recently. Words I used to hear other people say, and to which I just didn’t relate.

I have no wish for him to remain little forever. I can’t wait for him to get to the next stage of life, and I am fascinated by the human evolution going on right in front of my eyes.

So how is it then, that I all of a sudden relate to the ‘stop growing’ term?

Multiple events seem to have happened in fast succession over the last month. At 3.5 he has shot up even more in height, his vocabulary is getting more advanced, he has started a new daycare that is located at the school he is starting at next year, he is taking swim lessons on his own in the pool, his social ability, humour and creative ideas are more like those of his older sister – and he is about to ride a bike with 20 inch wheels, for goodness sake!

I realised by the look on his face, that he actually thought I really meant that I did not want him to stop growing! He was perplexed, because at home he is always encouraged to do all the things that make him a ‘big boy’, such as getting dressed by himself, setting the table, taking his own plate out after dinner, feeding the dog, brushing his teeth, clean his room etc. So why did I then one day want him to stop growing??

I explained to him that I was just joking. That I love that he is growing and learning, and that really I just said it, because I was proud of him and felt his growing was a happening at such a high speed recently, that I just wanted to slow it down a little bit, so I could take my time to properly enjoy it. After that, when I comment on what a big boy he is, he asks me ‘do you want me to stop growing NOW, mum?’ with a little expectant smile on his face.

And so it seems, that I have found a way to slow the growing down, even if its just for a few minutes at a time.