How can you be six?
My little baby girl who surprised us from conception onward… How can you be six? You kept us on our toes in utero, with your early but robust arrival, with your epic colic, your freakishly early verbosity, and freakishly late full head of hair and mouth full of teeth.
How can you be six?
I still see your enormous baby blue eyes staring up at me during one of your super-fast, super-efficient nursing sessions. Woe to the girls who have to compete against you in a sorority rush boat race!
How can you be six?
You have a shriek that can cut glass and a giggle that is so precious, so delicious, so marvelous that it should be in a museum for all to treasure.
How can you be six?
I will confess I kept your overnight diapers on way longer than I should have because I loved to pat your tiny bottom in them, loved the way they swished as you walk. I will confess that I love that you hang on to the bottom rungs of the growth chart with your doll-like hands, because I get to have you little for longer. I will confess that I could have ten more children and something about you will always make me want to baby you.
How can you be six?
Your aquamarine eyes, already enormous but made more so by your glasses, and your thicket of long eyelashes hold us all spellbound. Your little heart-shaped face and cleft chin, your skinny little legs…
How can you be six?
You have had more fads than the September issue of Vogue. As a baby, only the very softest, most delicate and stretchy (and most expensive) cottons would do. As a toddler, dresses only need apply. As a preschooler, it had to be bedazzled and the hairbands were often bigger than your head. No hand-me-down was acceptable. As a school-age child, your choice of sport is dictated by the uniform involved (yes to tennis, no to baseball) and you mainly like to wear anything other than what I lay out.
How can you be six?
Sometimes it feels like you’re still in my belly. You rarely kicked, but you made me crave pasta and candy, and those are your favorite foods.
Sometimes it feels like you’re still a newborn. You disrupt my sleep but cuddling with you at 3am is heavenly.
Sometimes it feels like you’re still a toddler . You still tantrum we both can often use a midday nap.
Sometimes it feels like you’re still in preschool. But I can’t get mad even after the third spill because your tongue-thruster ‘s’ is so cute when you say, “Oopth, thorry!”
You are the worst of me. You share my penchant for candy and sloth as we sit in my bed watching movies and eating sour straws while Daddy and Sloane go biking.
You are the best of me. You share my desire to always go for the laugh, even when it’s totally inappropriate and involves potty humor.
I don’t want you to grow up but I am glad I get to watch you do it.
So tell me, will you? How can you be six?
Lani Serota is the mother of two young girls, besotted wife, sleep aficionado (both her own and that of children), and celebrity child name enthusiast who loves a good giggle. When she is not working at one of her three jobs, taking advantage of everything New York City has to offer, or procrastinating, she loves to write. Lani lives with her husband and two daughters on the Upper East Side.
