I don’t like this!

The moment you have been thinking about, the moment you have been trying for, the moment you have not been so patiently waiting for…This was me 18 years ago. At a very young 22 years old, my husband and I decided to try for a baby. It didn’t take long before I was pregnant and 9 months later I gave birth to the most beautiful baby girl. Seriously! Not even joking THE most beautiful baby ever!! She did things so fast and I enjoyed watching my baby be so smart and so advanced. Little did I know that I would want those moments back more than anything. In all the excitement of watching her grow I didn’t realize how fast it was going. So here we are 18 years later, I am still watching her in complete awe and realizing this too is going way to fast. In 2 months I will be driving her to school 8 hours away. As excited as I am, I am just as sad. I am in this place of looking forward to seeing where God takes her and being EXTREMELY pissed off that my time is limited. If fact I am angry with her; I realize this sounds ridiculous! BUT I am. How can she not want to spend these last few fleeting moments with me???? I mean seriously doesn’t she know, this is it? Again, I know this sounds ridiculous, In fact I’m going to make a lot of ridiculous statements while you read this, so now that I have admitted all my ridiculousness I will continue…She wants to hang out with friends, or chill in her room, or anything that doesn’t include me. If she doesn’t act excited about being with me I storm out in anger, because? Well because I’m angry!! It’s that simple. I mean, who raises someone 18 years, does everything for them and then? What they get to decide they are grown and leave?? How dare she?? I have put in so much time and effort into molding her into this freaking amazing human. The kind of human I like to be around and she just gets to move out? WOW!! How unfair is that? So yeah, I’m a little pissed.

Truth be told She didn’t really decide to leave, I pushed that. I shoved her actually, she didn’t want to leave, she doesn’t want to grow up. She didn’t want to go that far. I encouraged her to spread her wings. Get out of her comfort zone and see what this world has to offer. What was I thinking? I am so excited for this next chapter of her life! That doesn’t mean I’m still not angry about it. It seems totally unfair that I can’t have it all! People have said we are supposed to raise good children to go out into the world to be good adults. This is not my philosophy at all! I raised freaking awesome kids because I wanted to live with people I like…so that’s what I did. I like my kids. I like spending time with them. Don’t get me wrong, I have threatened to leave them on the side of random roads because in certain moments I DON’T like them, but over all they are pretty darn amazing. I guess when you have babies you know they will grow up and leave and have families of their own but do you really plan for it? We always ask, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” but do we ever think they will really grow up and move out? I guess I didn’t.

We had her graduation party and invited some to celebrate this exciting time with us! I’m all about parties! I love throwing them. I love being with people celebrating a special occasion. I really hadn’t been emotional about it 1) because I really was separating the events from the reality of what was happening and 2) because I have been busy being pissed at her. You probably think I’m joking and I wish I was but nope seriously I am angry at her for growing up. At her party I wrote a toast to her and then I did get emotional. Not because it’s overly emotional but because I was saying out loud to all of my friends that I am acknowledging she is leaving me.

Thank you all for coming tonight. I know everyone is busy so it means a lot for you to Come and celebrate madisyn graduating high school. She is officially all grown up and heading out to the great big world of decision making…on our dime of course. Thank goodness for mom and dad’s…AND nana and grandad’s money. At the beginning of the school year I was planning on taking pictures. The cute ones with the signs, the first last day of school. You know the ones. She says to me she doesn’t want to do that. It’s so awkward. I paused for a minute and dug down deep the best way I could describe to her the importance of these moments. I then proceeded to explain to her to the best of my ability how all these small details of her senior year. All the things that seemed trivial to her now. All the things that seem silly now. ALL those things, well they aren’t about you!!! Those are about ME and what I NEED to get through this year. Those are all the moments I have worked so hard to prepare you for. These are MY moments. I have put in a lot of time and years to get to this point. So here I am celebrating MY achievement!! Not to toot my own horn but…beep beep. I have Successfully raised a beautiful, smart, hardworking, determined, God-fearing young women!! Oh And Jeffry can toot his too. He did help.

Most of you know Madisyn’s story but I’m going to give a quick run down of who Madisyn is. Even as a baby Madisyn was so smart! She was pulling up at 6 months old. She was walking at 8 months. She was talking in sentences at 14 months. She was smart!! At the time I didn’t realize how quickly it all was going. I was just in awe of this sassy little thing. She is not scared to try anything. At 5 there was a commercial of ice skating lessons at germain arena. She turns to me and says in her very dramatic voice “I have wanted to do that my whole life” so we signed her up and away she went. Before long she was moving her way up through classes and competing. All along playing soccer. It got to the point where she had to choose. It’s obvious what she chose. The heat. The blistering heat is what she chose. Any way. She did so good in school but she struggled. In 4th grade she was diagnosed with dyslexia. She was so relived to have an answer for her struggles. She has busted her butt and worked so hard to be successful in school. She works harder than anyone I know. There were many nights we studied and I begged her to go to bed. But she wouldn’t give up until she knew it. Dang over achieving kid. Exhausting!! So here we are! She has a scholarship to play soccer. She has a scholarship for academics. Jeffry and I led her to the doors but she put in the work to bust through them. I can not wait to see where this kid goes. NOW it’s about you! As much as I have enjoyed raising you and guiding you and as much as I don’t want to let you go I am so excited for your future and watching you go out there and do amazing things! So here’s to madisyn! The world is yours!

Of course, celebrating High School graduation is exciting and something to be proud of but in this celebration it means change. A big change for our family. I just down sized my vehicle because we will have one less person on a regular. For 15 years I drove a suburban and we traveled as a family of 6. Now we will be down to 5. I will not see her on a daily basis. The morning nazi will not be screaming at the top of her lungs to the others they are going to be late if they don’t hurry. Everything will be different.

I know it will be exciting to hear all about her days and the people she meets. I know we will get to travel and watch her play soccer or watch it live stream. Between her dad and myself, we have maybe missed 3 games in the past 14 years of her playing soccer. We will be missing quite a few and this will be hard but we truly are excited for her, but I don’t like that I won’t be there for every game or her dad won’t be there calling or texting with updates.

I am the mom of 4 children. 4 children who I truly like being around. I don’t like that they are growing up. My oldest is moving out in 2 months. I would like to say that I think it will get easier after the first but I can only assume that this gets harder because I am a mom and I can’t imagine not having 4 very loud kids in my home plus whatever other kids they bring in. As much as I don’t like this process, I am so thankful and blessed she has the opportunity to go off to college and play soccer. She will get to figure out what she wants to be when she grows up and I know she will make me so proud. I don’t like it but I am accepting it…or at least trying too.

It's Always the Little Things

soccermomeveryday

I don’t like this!

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