My Little Girl Is Growing Up...

This is one of those posts that probably won't translate quite the way I intended it to. But I have to tell you that I couldn't help myself this time. I've always tried to write this blog with sincerity. I continually try to put my heart out there for everyone to see. I have also been very conscious of keeping the content of this blog to that of a more anecdotal tone. In other words, I don't like bragging about my kids or gushing over their specific achievements or milestones. I try not to post cutesy pictures of birthday parties, messy cupcake faces or first poop poops on the potty. Not that there's anything wrong with that at all. There are a ton of great parenting blogs that chronicle the lives of their kids and they are absolutely adorable. This blog has been more about my experiences as a dad and how I've dealt or not dealt with those experiences. I try to find an overarching connection with parents. I often say some of the stuff that everyone is thinking about but doesn't want to say out loud. Most of the time I try to do this with humor and sometimes it happens to come across in a more serious way. This time I have to make an exception. Today I am the proudest I've ever been as a father. Today my little angel showed me how she is changing from a little girl into a young lady. Today my eyes welled up with tears of joy for the first time in as long as I can remember. I can only assume that there are just a few precious moments in a parent's lifetime that one can honestly look back on and say, "You know what? I guess I did something right all those years ago. Look at my baby now." So I have to apologize for what I'm about to share with you because it goes against the very fundamental philosophy of this blog. I can't help it but my baby just made me so darn proud. I've been on cloud 9 all day.

You see, last night my six and half year old princess threw up in the toilet. That's right. She woke up in the middle of the night with a stomach virus and she puked in the bowl all by herself. She didn't cry. She didn't make a mess. She didn't wake her younger sister. Gosh darn it, she even held her hair back all by herself. That my friends is a mature and selfless act. I didn't even have to get out of bed. Of course I felt terrible and was very concerned but my wife went to check on her so I figured I'd keep the bed warm. I had also taken Tylenol PM so I was extra lazy. Hearing her hurl from the bathroom down the hall brought back memories of college. I dated girls back then that couldn't of found the shitter if they had a GPS attached to their head. **

Most kids don't think about regurgital etiquette in the heat of the moment. Usually it's a barftacular mess. Puke on the sheets, puke on the floor, puke on the pajamas. There have been nights when my wife and I spent hours cleaning up chunks of meat sauce and pedialyte only to find ourselves gagging in tandem until the sun came up. I'm not sure what made the difference this time. I'm not sure what triggered that little inner voice in her head to say, "I'm gonna be a little debutante tonight and heave with dignity and grace. I'm gonna make my pappa proud." You know what? I couldn't care less why it happened. You don't question miracles. You take life's little gifts as they are handed to you and you savor them like gobstoppers or White Castle cheeseburgers. This weekend I saw a transformation in my baby girl and it made me feel sentimental. It gave me pause to appreciate that there are certain things you can't necessarily teach your children but somehow they are resourceful enough to learn it themselves. Tonight my daughter blew chunks in the toilet all by herself and I consider myself the luckiest son of a bitch on the face of the earth.

Postscript - My younger daughter inevitably caught the stomach virus and puked all over her self and her crib at 3am the next morning. Suffice it to say my moment was short but it was a moment nonetheless...

**The GPS or Global Positioning System was not available for civilian use until 1995. This was three years after I graduated college. It would have been impossible for any girl I dated at the time (as referenced in this post) to have had access to a GPS , let alone have one attached to her head. This reference was used with creative license for the sole purpose of adding humor to said Out-Numbered anecdote.