My eldest urchin will start Junior high school next week.
That makes me feel pretty damn old. I've never really paid much attention to my physical age; it's always been about how old I feel rather than how old I actually am...but having a child in junior HS makes it hard to ignore.
It seems like just yesterday I was pregnant with her and was considering calling her Nirvana (yes, I really did toy with the idea for most of my pregnancy). Now here she is wearing a bra and getting periods and showing a definite interest in boys (Orlando Bloom is the current crush).
She'll be a teenager this year. Wow. That just blows my mind some days.
She and I have a decent relationship, I think. She tells me stuff; she confides in me. She borrows my clothes and shoes ('cept her feet are to big for them now...HA!) and she thinks I'm cool (for the most part anyway). I know we have a better relationship than I did with my mother. I didn't feel like I could tell my mother anything, I didn't think that she'd understand. Shea says she doesn't worry about that with me. I think that has a lot to do with my attitude about my age (and my age itself)...my mother was 35 when I came along. I'm 36 and I have a teenager.
She's going to discover the Junior High is a whole new world. No more staying in one classroom and having your teachers come to you, oh no. This year she'll be trekking around from room to room. There's going to be more pressure about grades and homework, and there's certainly going to be more peer pressure. She's going from the top of the food chain in elementary school to the bottom of the food chain in middle/junior high. That's probably going to take a little getting used to.
My little girl isn't a little girl anymore. She's a young woman. And she's beautiful.