Raising Daughters

 

I love this picture.  I took it last year, thinking it just captured such an innocent moment of my girls.  I had just planted this garden and they had been running around and playing.  They were taking a break and eating an ice-pop on the rock.  Just sitting side by side enjoying the melting ice-pop, the wind, the outdoors and each other....ahh, lifee is good.

I love having daughters, they are silly and fun.  Girly yet tomboy, so sweet.  I spend a lot of time thinking about them and what is to come.  My poor husband, he has no idea what this house will be like in a few more years.  Moods flying, tempers flaring, doors slamming, all over a pair of jeans that just won't fit them the right way.  I know it is coming.  My girls are 27 months apart, just about the same age difference as my sister and me, so I know.

No matter what success I may achieve in life, nothing will trump how important it is to me to raise some fabulous women.  I think that as moms this not becoming harder to do, but something that will be a bit more challenging and in this very fast paced society, will actually take more time to do. 

My husband, is not a guy who embraces technology and likes to make a hard stand "my daughters will not be living on their cell phones"  I chuckle because, there are things that will just be inevitable, can't slow down technology and I do not even argue with him on that one because by the time they are teenagers for all we know they will ditch their life line of text-messaging and will just be able to beam themselves into their friends or yikes...boyfriends homes.  Hey if CNN can do it, the technology it is just around the corner.

I am still at the early stages of raising girls, they are only 3 and 5 years old.  But ask them what makes them beautiful and they say your heart.  One day I was driving in the car talking to my 5 year old.  I said "Emily, who will always be with you no matter what?", she said "you mommy".  It was a little bit hard for me to answer her on this because you don't want to freak them out in anyway, but I said "well, I will always love you and am there for you, but the one person who is ALWAYS with you is you".  She did not get it at first but I explained to her that you should always be your own friend, like yourself, because in good times and in bad the one constant is you (did not word it that complex for a 5 year old), but she understood and thinks about it.

There is so much that is going to be thrown at our kids, they will grow and control will loosen as their independence takes shape.  I know that it will be hard for me.  The best that I can hope for is to provide my girls with a sense of sound judgment, with enough of my faint voice in their heads as they get older to stop and think about what they are doing for 1 second.   I know it will not always work, it did not work for me all the time.  I marched to my own drummer and 17 is 17 years old, you are not always going to make the wisest of choices.

So, raising girls, what a treat.  From rainbows, to fairies, to mud-pies, through total drama of the smallest thing, to utter meltdowns, to raising a girl who becomes a women and says thank you mom.  It is what I have done to my mom, I got what she did for me and what she taught me and I am blessed to be able to pass that on....that is life!

Comments

[Moni]

what a wonderful post.

[Samantha]

Awww, what a sweet post and beautiful picture. I bet you have a lot of fun, I take care of my 5 year old niece and 3 year old nephew, they make my world. :)

[Jennifer]

I have a daughter who is a teenager now. I loved watching her grow up. I never thought I'd have one because my first was a boy and when we decided to try again I was told the second was a boy too. But low and behold on delivery day the doctors were wrong SHE was a GIRL! One of the best days of my life! Don't get me wrong I love my son but there is nothing like having a daughter!