It’s amazing how I never really thought about ice cream. That is, of course, until I was told that my nut allergy meant that I couldn’t eat about 99.9% of the world’s ice cream. Adorable ice cream shops in small towns? Nope. Baskin Robbins? Forget about it. Any ice cream…
Gone are the days that kids are free to, just, be kids. They can’t bike on their own, they can’t go to the park on their own, they can’t even go to the mailbox on their own. The world is a different place, definitely, but we, as parents, are different too. We are much more cautious, much more hesitant to let our kids have freedoms.
I want my kids to have some freedoms; I need them to have some freedoms.
It’s time.
So, in the mornings, I stand on my front porch in my snowman flannel pajama pants, hold my giant cup of coffee in my hands, and watch my three children walk to school on their own. I watch them take ownership over something that is just theirs—100% theirs.
And as I watch them walk further and further away from me, I both smile and heavily sigh. I smile because it’s so great to see—the three of them, walking side-by-side, talking to each other. I sigh, though, because I know—with each and every step they take away from me—that my little babies are growing up.
My JoshJosh has always seemed like this complicated puzzle that was handed to me ten years ago today. A puzzle to solve. A puzzle full of awesome, cool, and unusual pieces that just didn’t seem to fit. I had all of the right pieces, I knew I did, but just didn’t know how to put ’em all together properly. It turns out that I didn’t need to do any solving at all—those pieces just needed to fall into place on their own.
And they have. They really have.
A perfect fit.
