Has anyone seen my little girl?

I'm not entirely sure when exactly it happened, but somewhere, somehow it happened and no-one told me. I first noticed sitting in my car one day when I turned around to find this little girl sitting in the car seat in the back. No not the baby I thought I had, but a real, proper, 100% genuine, little girl. It was one of those moments when you turn, look, turn back again, realise just what it was that you're looking at and jerk your head back around with a startled stare as your jaw hits the ground. That was the moment that I realised that my little girl was growing up.

I should have realised when we got the note from our day-care to say that Maddie was going to be "graduating" from the babies' room that she was in to the toddlers' room.  It just never sank in. Of course there were the moments of extreme gushing pride from us as parents that our daughter was indeed growing up, but really it was a realisation in name only until that day it actually happened.

Personally I blame day-care. Don't get me wrong, our day-care is absolutely fabulous and they do so much with Maddie in terms of her learning and keeping her stimulated in ways that we could never imagine us being able to do at home. They keep us up to date with all the little milestones and achievements that she has along the way and let us know about all the good things she is doing. The other week when I was dropping her off one morning on my way to work, I had a chat to one of the teachers who was particularly impressed at how Maddie had grasped the concept of "tidy up time" and was always willing to lend a hand to help out, especially with her still being quite young (OK so we'll see if she's still willing to help out at "tidy up time" when she's a teenager, but that's a bridge we'll cross when we come to it). This sort of information is fantastic to get and makes you proud as a parent that somehow, in your own muddling through kind of way, you actually managed to get something right.  My issue is that no-one tells you that your child is growing up so fast and it's not until something happens that lets you see it for yourself, that you actually realise this.

It does however make you appreciate the time that you do get to spend with your child, particularly these days where families like ours do need to have both parents working full time to get by. As she is growing up, Maddie is getting more and more interactive. Her vocabulary is expanding and new words seem to be emerging from her mouth now on an almost daily basis. She likes to inform me while driving in the car on the way to day-care that she has seen a "dog" out the window and it goes "WOOF!"   She is very definite about her likes and dislikes and she isn't afraid to tell you all about it - "NO!"

Right now Maddie is all about trying new things and showing us just how clever she is.  If she had her way she would be dressing herself, but she just can't seem to figure out how to get her head through those darn holes. This very evening while Maddie was with me in the kitchen supervising the cooking of dinner, she was showing me how well she can now jump, accompanied of course by the "Jump! Jump!" commentary.

Maddie is also gaining a sense of family - not just with Mummy and Daddy, but with her Nan and Poppa (pronounced with a shout and two exclamation marks, "POPPA!!"), her Aunty Karen and (Uncle) Timmy, and all the other surrogate Aunts and Uncles made up from our cousins and other extended family and friends. And with that sense of family comes a sense of belonging and finding her own little place in this world that of course revolves around her.

No matter which way you look at it, there is no escaping the fact that children do grow up.  This brings me back to my original point that there should be some sort of mechanism to remind us more regularly that our children are in fact doing just that and growing up. We as parents should not have to be put through the stress and sudden shock of one day realising that our beautiful babies have disappeared and been replaced by equally beautiful little girls and boys. We need something like the red and yellow marker flags on the Amazing Race to let us know that we're on the right track and the accompanying clues about what our next challenges are going to be. But we also need to sometimes be able to tape the journey so that we can look back on all the things that we have accomplished along the way. Certainly that's not too much to ask is it?