I remember being a little boy and not wanting to wait to grow up. All the good things in life that I could imagine existed in the realm of "big kids". Latter all that was good an grand belonged to those who could drive. Then I was 18 and an official adult. I could vote. I could join the military, although I never did. The last magic age was 21, when I got there it was anticlimactic. I had been drinking in bars since I was 16. Now that I was legal there was no element of rebellion in what I was doing and with that, the thrill was gone. I suppose the last great frontier to cross was marriage. Which I did. We were married for a number of years before having kids and I had begun to assume that we would be childless.
Then we had a little boy and a couple of years latter a little girl. Compared to the first half of my life, the second half is speeding by. This last week we, and by we I mean Mrs. Ipsa, began potty training our youngest. It seems that little girls prefer their mommy to help wipe that part of their body. Little Ms has long preferred her mom to take care of the "poopies". In retrospect that may be one of the reasons I love her so. Today being a Saturday I was home at nap time. So we went trough the whole potty time before nap time routine with little Ms. She seemed less than pleased that daddy was part of the process. Then to heap insult on to injury mommy informed her that daddy would put her down for her nap. She resisted long and hard and only the exceptional cunning of daddy carried the day and she slipped off to sleep.
I crept from her room and went to check in on Res Jr. He should have been fast asleep but he was playing on the floor with his cars and planes. As I walked in he turned and looked up at me. With a big smile on his little face he said, "I'm waiting for you daddy". We crawled up into his bed and he hugged me tight. "Rub my back daddy" he requested. As I did he closed his eyes and mumbled "I love taking a nap with you". We snuggled and soon he was asleep. I waited a little and slipped out of the bed and back downstairs.
Soon little Ms will go potty by herself and my son won't want a back-rub at nap time. Then there will be no more nap time and the hugs will be fewer. I will get scolded by both my wife and my daughter for wearing the universal uniform of fathers everywhere, shorts, back shoes and white socks. Dammit, kids in diapers went by too fast. No matter what my son says, he is not waiting for me, he is growing up 60 minutes an hour, 24 hours a day, every day. Everything I wanted to be be big for came to slow. Now its all going by too fast.
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