It's probably for the best that parents aren't the ones deciding how quickly their kids grow up.
There are moments that you are positive that you won't be able to endure, that you would sacrifice a kidney for if only you could make that age stop.
For me, it was those first six weeks of each kid's life. Newborns are cute and snuggly but an amazing amount of work and not a whole lot of fun.
Let's not even get into the sleep deprivation.
Also tricky were the months right after the Diva turned 4. After two weeks of crying jags followed by lists of demands, I wished that she'd soon be old enough to move out of the freaking house.
I still cringe a little at how passionately I wanted those weeks to pass.
The Boy was especially tedious when he was figuring out how to walk, which required that one of us would always be stooped over and holding his hands.
Right now, he's going through one of those wish-it-would pass stages with potty training, which I don't have the intestinal fortitude to even begin to describe.
As a good friend's mother once said, as we were all gnashing our teeth over various kid habits we couldn't live with anymore, "children are like the weather. Wait a little bit and they change."
What she didn't mention is how that change will irritate the snot out of you in an entirely new way. That might be a lesson we all learn on our own.
Your experiences might be different, of course. I'm willing to bet the college fund that there was at least one stage that made you nuts, where you found yourself sitting on the back porch with an adult beverage wishing that you could just jump three months (or years) into the future.
If you haven't had it yet, you will. And when you do, think of me.
But for each of those stages that you endure, there are the ones that you never want to let go: the weeks when the best toy ever is a balloon or a ceiling fan, when your oldest delights in reading books to you and to her brother, when your youngest is a cute little booger who can charm the skin off of a snake.
Those brief windows where you wish you could just stay for a few minutes more so that you can admire every last detail of the view.
If I could choose, I'd keep my kids there, in those mystical sweet spots where they've plateaued in a stage long enough for them to feel confident and for you to come to terms with it. If we could choose, they'd stay that way forever.
Time moves on.
The Diva was looking over my shoulder the other day while I was reading a magazine. It was something innocuous, like Real Simple or Martha Stewart Living, and not a fashion rag. We got to an ad for body lotion, the sort that features a young, skinny, white woman with flawless skin whose presence sells the idea that if you use this lotion, you'll be a young, skinny, white woman, too.
"She's hot," the Diva said.
I blinked a couple of times.
"What do you mean?" I asked. "Is she hot' as in too warm?'"
"Not that," she said, fixing me with that look that makes it clear that I am the most square human in the universe (and I suspect I just made myself even more square by describing myself as square). "You know, she's hot, like, hot."
I felt my brain start to turn itself inside out. My almost-6-year-old continued to hover behind me _ but something shifted in that moment. This wasn't like the time a few years ago when she started calling everything "sexy" because Donkey in "Shrek" said it. When she referred to her lamp as sexy, I knew that all of the connotations of the word hadn't really sunk in.
This time, "hot" was used with full knowledge of the context she was using it in. Is almost-6 too young to care about whether or not a woman is hot?
It doesn't matter how I answer that question. The Diva has moved into another stage long before I was ready. Which is how it should be, I guess. Otherwise, I'd always think she was too young to start thinking about what it means to be female and/or hot. No, I don't think she's steps away from getting lipo and aping Paris Hilton _ just typing that made me throw up a little _ but there is clearly a new phase starting here against my will.
Just like that, a low-pressure system started forming over the South Atlantic. How do I have before this particular hurricane develops?
Adrienne Martini is freelance writer, instructor at the State University College at Oneonta and Hartwick College, mom to Maddy and Cory and wife to Scott and author of "Hillbilly Gothic," published by the Free Press.
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