Growing Up

To her bewildered mommy, Clara Grace seemed to have suddenly transformed into a grown child. Everyone had warned her of this phenomenon, but she honestly believed that her perception of her baby girl was accurate enough to remain unshakeable even after she returned from the hospital with a helpless and tiny infant in her arms. All children grow up however, and Clara Grace’s mommy soon saw in alarming clarity with a mixture of regret and pride how the gradual effects of almost two years had worked their inevitable effects of change over her baby daughter.

The first time Clara Grace’s mommy kissed the top of her daughter’s head, she was utterly surprised at what now felt more like a Kindergartner’s curly noggin than the little baby’s soft brow she had left just days earlier. And when she rocked Clara Grace on the first day home, she couldn’t help wondering how she’d missed the way her baby girl’s head and long legs dangled over the arms of the rocking chair completely unlike the curled up baby girl she had remembered from less than a week ago.

Not only had the toddler seemed to grow physically, but her vocabulary and syntax had multiplied by leaps and bounds as well. On Friday, two days after Everett arrived, Clara Grace snuggled beside her mommy and baby brother on the sofa and pretended to sleep like her baby brother. “Are you sleepy?” her mommy asked quietly.

“Sleepy,” Clara Grace answered.

“Are you ready for your nap?” her mommy inquired.

“Okay,” Clara Grace replied.

“All right, let’s go to your bed then,” her mommy said and began to stand.

Clara Grace’s head popped up from the cushion in alarm and she shouted, “No!”

“But you said you were sleepy,” her mommy told her.

“Want to sleep on the couch,” Clara Grace informed her and then snuggled back onto the cushion.

That night, Clara Grace awoke uncharacteristically in the early hours of the morning. Her daddy checked in on her to determine the problem. "What’s the matter?” he asked his little girl.

“Fires on floor,” she told him dejectedly and looked wistfully through the crib’s bars at her discarded pacifiers.

“Why are they on the floor?” her daddy asked in an attempt to find the underlying cause of the night’s disturbance.

“I dropped them,” Clara Grace admitted ruefully.

“And why did you drop them?” her daddy persisted. “Hungry,” Clara Grace replied, “Need food.”

Floored by his one year old daughter’s grasp of cause and effect, Clara Grace’s daddy asked patiently, “Do you think you can wait till morning when we’ll eat a big breakfast?”

Clara Grace thought for a long moment and then answered, “Wait.”

Her daddy rocked her until the little girl told him drowsily, “Want to go to sleep in bed.”