Aislinn Turns Seven

Since the time Aislinn’s teeth finally came in (at 15 months old), I haven’t really spent much time wondering about her them. I was hoping for her sake that some would fall out, so she could have a big gap in her smile like all the other kids in her class. So I have waited with her for some loosening of her teeth, figuring (wrongly) that her teeth were not falling out because it took them so long to come in. This week Aislinn had two teeth pulled to make room for a permanent tooth that has already surfaced. The dentist put Aislinn’s pulled teeth in a little plastic box shaped like a tooth. I took them out and couldn’t believe what I found. I know it should not have been shocking to me, but they were so small and looked just like the teeth she got when she was a baby (because they are the teeth she got when she was a baby, dummy). I know that teeth don’t grow, but it seems ludicrous that a for almost six years she has been eating using only these teeny teeth that fit inside her mouth when she was only a baby.

Everyday I watch my kids grow and achieve, and every day I am glad that they have become a little more self sufficient and a little more confident in confronting the world without me. I have never really felt that they have “grown up so quickly” because time doesn’t really pass quickly for me. Today we were looking at pictures from two years ago, and all of the kiddies seemed tiny. Could that only be two years ago? It seems like a decade. From time to time I consciously tell myself “Stop a minute and remember this. This is something that you shouldn’t forget,” but I do have a strong ability to enjoy the present. I don’t overlook it because I am too busy planning for the future or miss it because I am wistfully remembering the past. I suppose it helps that I am home with the kiddies all the time, so I have many many many hours of time with them to remember. If I only saw them for a few hours each day, time probably would seem to speed up, and maybe when they are all in school full time, I will start to feel like they are growing up quickly.

When I look back through Aislinn’s baby pictures, I can see how her curly hair has straightened out, her chubby face has thinned out, and her round little arms and legs have become the impossibly long skinny limbs she has now. I have watched her from the time she learned her ABCs to the day she started reading on her own. I have seen her as she learned to crawl, then walk, run, jump, hop, and climb. And still those tiny little teeth startled me. They are a tangible part of her babyhood, like the stroller or the high chair, that she doesn’t need any more.

I suppose all first time parents are unprepared for what’s coming along in nine months, and I was no exception. I had no idea how I would relate to this little stranger, how I would figure out what he/she was like. The day Aislinn was born, as the nurse wrapped her up in a blanket and put her in my arms, I looked down at her sweet little face and my heart…blah, blah, blah, I’m not really that kind of girl. What happened was she looked me straight in the face and screamed, and the HP and I laughed, because there she was. She was not mysterious, she was minutes old and telling us exactly what she felt. That was a huge relief to me, and for the past seven years, she has continued to make us laugh and make us proud and make us wonder how any other kid (other than her siblings) could possibly be as wonderful as she is. So Happy Birthday Ais Crais! You were a great baby, a stupendous toddler, a charming preschooler, a fantastic kindergartener, an award-winning first-grader, and I’m sure you’ll be the best second grader on record.