Any-Mom » Kid Years

Kid Years

03.30.2009 | Author: OrganizerMom | Posted in The Years Slide By

My son recently turned 5. While everyone else was distracted with birthday gifts and party planning, all I could think was, “How did this happen?” How did my son zoom through 5 years of life to become the (fairly) independent boy he is now? He dresses himself, feeds himself, buckles his own seatbelt (which he calls a belt-seat), and rarely needs extended hugging and snuggling time like he used to.

I started thinking about the time passing and how it seemed to go excruciatingly slowly while simultaneously fast-forwarding us at the speed of light to a fifth birthday. And then I came up with my new pet theory: Kid Years.

Kid Years run at rabbit speed and also at turtle speed. Sometimes the speed alternates. Like in the newborn stage, a calendar day can last three or four days in Kid Years. In fact, most individual calendar days seem to pass at turtle speed, especially when your child is a screaming colicky infant.

It’s only when you look back, say at birthdays and holidays and family gatherings, you realize that somehow, even though the days are turtles, the years pass by like rabbits. They also seem to multiply like rabbits. One year your kid is 2, and then somehow, he zooms forward to 5.

Meanwhile, your own life is passing at breakneck speed, which is a new sensation for you because before you had kids, the days lasted forever. It took me at least twenty years to get from the age of 20 to the age of 30, but it took about 5 years to get from age 30 to age 40. Weird. And now that I’m in my forties, I feel fifty coming on like a freight train.

Looking ahead, I can’t imagine my sweet little five-year-old turning into a pimply, sullen teenager. But I know it’s coming. So I’m slowing down time as much as possible, soaking up every minute of five-year-old time before it’s gone.

And then maybe I can just bypass the teenage years and go straight to the day when my son has graduated from college with honors and is about to become a CEO of a major company or the inventor of the new Twitter or Facebook, thus ensuring that I’ll never have to work again as long as I live.