My Last's Firsts

My youngest child will be 16 in a couple of days.

This is so weird to me.

When we are parents, I think a lot of time we focus on our firsts.  Our first child's first steps.  Our first child's first words.  Our first child's foray into school.  Her first concert. Her first sporting event. It seems a big deal when that child does all of her firsts. And then she is first to go to college, and that feels gigantic.

Where does that leave the rest of our kids, specifically our lasts?  For me, as my last does her first of everything, it reminds me that this parenting thing is definitely time sensitive, and that it will end.  Not in the way that other jobs end, because, face it, they leave and still need us.  But that her life with me will end. And now that she's 16, it will end soon.

Lauren's firsts always sort of shock me. When I commented the other day that I couldn't believe she was turning 16, she rolled her eyes and responded that I say that about every age. That's probably true, but there's something about 16 that screams there's no going back now. Maybe it's the beginning of driving that makes it seem so final. Or how she's choosing her Junior Year schedule right now. Or that colleges keep sending her mail.  I don't know. But 16 seems a lot older than 15. (She says I say that about every age, too, and she's probably right.)

Lauren has always been my baby. She might cringe as she reads this, but it's true.  She nursed for a much longer time than my older one did.  She wanted me close by for much longer than my older one did. It took a much longer time for me to feel she was ready for Kindergarten. Who knows if that's just me dealing with her last-ness or really her? My mind messes with me.

Sixteen just seems so...impossible.  Like, Are you sure? I look at her and think, "Lauren is a teenager." I say it to myself to keep in my mind that she is one, not the baby I keep seeing.  That she is sixteen. No two ways about it.