My Little Grown Up

My darling Anju has been thinking about and discussing quite a bit lately what it will be like when she grows up.   This, of course, is because she will soon be 4, which is "growed up."

When she is 4, she can start preschool, which makes her a big kid.  Big kids are "growed up".  She longs to be big.  She discovered belt loops on her pants a couple days ago and ran around looking for a belt so she could be "just like Sister!"  She's ready to dump the toddler bed on her fourth birthday and switch to the bunk bed.  She doesn't want anything to do with a sippy cup.  She can do it all herself.  After all, she's almost 4.

So, today, it was no shock when she crawled in my lap wearing her jammies and started telling me all about what she's going to do when she grows up.  She's going to have her own house.  She's going to save her toys so that her kids can play with them (except the Little People which I should keep for them to play with when they visit me.)  She's going to be a mom, and I will be a grandma.  Her kids will call me "Grandma Mom".  She will have a daddy at her house, but not THAT daddy (points at Shawn).  She will have her own daddy to live with.  And she will have lots of kids.  "But they won't have black hair like me.  And, they'll probably have peach skin."

What?

I reminded her that kids usually look like their mama and their daddy.  (We have a book that talks about this.)  I told her that her kids would probably look like her, with brown skin, but it depended on what kind of daddy she married.  She thought about it.  Hmmmmm.  She pointed out that some daddies were peach, some were black and some were brown.  She thought maybe she'd like a brown daddy for her family.  Then we talked about what Solveig and Jonah's kids might look like.  They might have yellow hair, she thought, and peach skin.  She thought Jonah's kids might have jammies like his, because kids sometimes look like their daddy.  Unless they adopted a kid, and then it would probably have black hair and brown skin and be from India.

I told her I hoped her kids looked like her, because she is very beautiful with shiny, black hair; soft, brown skin; and sparkling, brown eyes.  She smiled and snuggled into my chest with her special blanket wrapped around her, holding her teddy and sweetly sucking her thumb.  Ahhhhhhh.  So grown up.