There are times in parenthood when you feel like a salmon swimming upstream, or like you're walking the wrong way through IKEA (don't try this at home folks) and that each stage will last forever, and then suddenly, it's all over.
The boy who insisted on saying 'dada' and refusing to say 'mama' is suddenly returning a packet of Haribos with, 'thanks anyway, I'm not overly fond of them', and telling me he's star of the day for 'resilience'.....turned out it was 'perseverance' (potato, potato).
He's seven FFS!
He even got lippy with the hairdresser the other week as she gave him the little boy speech about sitting nice and still while she used the shaver round the back of his neck.
"Right Daniel, where shall we shave today, shall we shave off your moustache?"
Daniel: "No, let's shave yours!"
And she wasn't the only one being subjected to the cutting edge of Daniel's new-found sharpness.
I was getting out my Spring wardrobe and came across some shorts.
Daniel: "They won't fit you any more mummy?"
Me: "What do you mean?"
Daniel: "Well, now that you're bigger."
Sharp intake of breath.
Dramatic pause (thinking time for Daniel).
Daniel: "I mean taller mummy, they won't fit you now that you're taller."
They grow up way too quickly.
Mind you, the 12-year-old still has his moments.
Teddy: "Muuuuuum."
Me: "Yes, love?"
Teddy: "I wouldn't like to be a phone."
Me: ???? (words fail me)
Teddy: "Well, I would hate to get dropped and scratched and I couldn't have a shower or I'd break."
I'm 43 and wouldn't go back a single day. It's funny that people often wish they could go back X number of years and do it all again. I wouldn't.
I'll be 44 this summer, which sits well with my numerical OCD, although I don't recall if 33 had the same effect, maybe OCD wasn't so popular then (cue winking smiley) or at least there weren't as many documentaries about it on Channel 4.
As humans we're never happy really though are we? At work, I have to ask customers if they are UK Taxpayers and would therefore like to Gift Aid their donation.
Whether they say 'yes' or 'no', they always start with 'unfortunately....'.
Maybe dementia helps. My dad and a fellow resident in his care home had a fantastic 20 minute debate about whether, when they went to (apparently!?) the same grammar school 70+ years ago, the boys turned left and the girls turned right once through the entrance gate, or visa versa.
My dad makes little or no sense at the best of times and recently spent a frustrated ten minutes trying to drink a can of beer with a dessert spoon and couldn't understand why it wouldn't go through the ring pull hole in the top. Then, as clear as a bell he pronounced: "You don't come and visit me often enough."
Then the following week, on one of my clearly infrequent visits, another of my dad's aged friends showed me an entry in a battered old address book.
Stabbing at a barely legible name with his finger he recalled: "That man went away to fight in the war, came back and discovered some bloke had been banging his wife so he murdered him and got away with it. Look, I've got his address."
I'm aware of rambling today so going to end with another random observation about 'the world that we live in' (cue deep sigh).
What a shame a petrol station has to use a piece of string to tie a hand soap bottle to the disabled hand rail in their toilet for fear of it being nicked, and display a huge laminated sign telling people not to flush nappies down the loo.
Funnily enough, although I don't recall changing nappies, I'm fairly certain I never had the urge to do that.
