How you know they're growing up...

Big kid:

He's not listening, I'm frustrated about something else and begin to raise my voice.

"Mommy," he says authoritatively. "Calm down. Just calm down. Take a deep breath in *breathes in* and then out *breathes out*. There, do you feel better now? Let's talk about it."

Talk about making me feel like a total jerk...

*****

Little kid:

*Grabs his butt*
"Ew! Yucky poopoo! Yuck yuck!"
*Gasps and flails then keeps pointing me in the right direction as I take him upstairs to change him.

*****

Big kid:

"Do you promise you won't go through the back gate? I know it looks fun back there, but it's not safe and if you fall in the creek we won't be able to help you."

"I promise!"

*I walk inside to take over care of the hungry baby from Nik, who has gotten him ready for bed. I peer over my shoulder or out the window the whole time. He doesn't go anywhere near the gate. I don't even catch him looking at it.*

*****

Little kid:

*I'm driving to the gym and lazily handing back animal crackers every here and there. I pause for a few minutes.*

"Caaaackaaaaa, caaaackaaaaa."

*I realize he's asking for a cracker and I look in my rearview mirror to see that he's tilted himself to look in the mirror perfectly, so that he can lock eyes with me. He smiles as I hand him a fistful of animal crackers.*

*****

Big kid:

"He's had a great day today!" "We had so much fun with him!" "He always takes a minute to warm up, but he's never any trouble after that!"

Little kid:

"We had so much fun!" "He's very adventurous!" "Oh, there's my little friend! I was waiting for him to show up."

*****

In short, I have two fun, wonderful, damn awesome kids. And after years of attachment work and high needs infancy and sleepless nights and rages and food issues and therapy, etc, I'm totally going to brag about our totally wonderful mundane world because, dammit, we've earned this!