Country-Fried Daddy took this photo of Miss D. at Fernbank Science Center in Atlanta in December.
I love the picture, and I’ve been holding onto it waiting for a story to come along that would need just this particular image — an enormous fossil seemingly leaning down to check out an active, vivacious child who was more captivated looking at something over there than at a great beast that once roamed the earth.
But nothing has come up that quite fit, so I let the picture sit on my desktop for the past few months.
Early in March, we spent several hours in the yard on a Sunday afternoon raking up last fall’s dead leaves.
I looked up from bagging smelly muck at one point and saw Miss D. standing on an old stump near our fence. She was telling an elaborate story to an invisible audience, waving her arms in the air and projecting her voice so that her tale of long ago likely reached most of the neighborhood.
She looked taller than she had the day before.
Her neck was longer.
Her face was thinner.
And I quickly realized I had waited too long to use the dinosaur picture.
She’s not the same kid she was in December. Just like that — that quickly — she changed.
Unlike the dinosaur we saw in Atlanta, Miss D. is not standing still. She is growing, moving, reaching for the next thing and we are running behind her trying to keep up.
This post is written in response to I Should Be Folding Laundry’s You Capture assignment: Reaching.
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
Twitter: objectivityrach
March 18, 2010 at 8:45 pm
Wow…you’re right – she looks like a totally different kid. Which is always easier to see in other people’s kids than your own. That whole growing thing – it happens way too quickly. Especially if they’re vivacious.
Twitter: countryfried
March 18, 2010 at 8:48 pm
Dude. You have to watch out for the vivacious ones.
I just had this same thought today about my son. His chubbiness, his babyness, is gone. He is boy, all boy. Oh, my heart. (He doesn’t have Miss D.’s snazzy sneakers though.)
Wow. I can’t believe the difference just a few months pass. It’s those sneaky braids. I’ve been thinking about doing away with them myself. I love how the braids look, but not how much older they made my daughter look.
Well she looks adorable in both pictures and that’s the important thing.
Is is SO sad how fast they grow.
Unless of course they are at a particularly frustrating stage and then it feels like time stands still.
Oh, wow, you can really see it in comparing those pictures! It’s so bittersweet–fascinating to watch them grow and evolve, but sad to watch them leave each stage behind forever. (Except for some of the less photogenic ones.)
Yes, I noticed on skype how grown up she looks and acts. That birthday is looming at us.
They grow so fast…you are right….she does look different already!
If Miss D. is growing that fast, then that means – CRAP! Ok, one of us has got to figure out how we keep them small. I’m afraid to blink now.
Though littler or bigger, Miss D. is adorable.
She certainly is changing every day, not only in her physical appearance, but in everything she says and does. She’s animated when she talks and so entertaining. I know she challenges you and CFD constantly! We can’t wait to hear about her next “adventure!”