Household Maturing

Today, I went to the dentist. The dental assistant made a comment that caused me to reflect on the maturing state of our household. After having met me, and then looking at my papers, she said "wow! you're so young!" I didn't really know how to react to that, because I had no idea what prompted her to say it. Did she look at my birthday and think I just looked a lot older than my 27 years? Did she think I was young to have just had a baby? Or was she surprised by how recently 1985 seemed? [I must admit it's weird I have a few good friends who were born in the 90's.] I did the only logical thing I could think of, and said "thank you," not really knowing what was the appropriate thing to say.

Age is so relative, it's hard to ever feel consistently "old" or "young" if you interact with a wide variety of people. When I was younger, I loved having older friends and being mistaken as their same age. I think I felt some pride in my ability to fool others. I realize this will likely change at some point, at least in the opposite direction. Luckily for the dental assistant, I haven't hit that point. Despite my gray hairs, I still enjoy feeling older than I am. It is likely still due to the fact I have a lot of good friends in their 30s and 40s, and there are times I feel like such a baby when we start talking about culture specifics from childhood.

Watching my kids mature, has been similar but different. I have a hard time relating to so many of my friends who lament their children getting older. So far, I just get excited to learn more about their hidden little personalities, and thrilled they're growing and developing and becoming less dependent on me and my arms. I'm guessing this will change, but boy I love watching these kiddos grow.

Allie definitely wins on the rate of maturing in our house. At a mere 7 weeks she looks like a 3 month old to me. I love that she's holding up her head more, smiling more and sleeping through the night more. I'm not thrilled that her daily weight gain keeps making it harder to bounce her to sleep when she's really over tired.



Jackson proved his maturity by surviving a weekend of LDS General Conference. Essentially, instead of church, we watch a broadcasted conference from Salt Lake, on Saturday and Sunday. In the past, we've been able to time watching it around his naps. This year he was awake for 7 1/2 hours of the 8 hours we watched. WHEW! Quite the trooper.We were stunned by how much he actually enjoyed it. At the end of the first 2 sessions he cried when we turned it off! During 80% of the speaking time, he played nicely by himself, and during the choir numbers he took this attentive pose:

Perhaps he has an unusual attraction to music, or perhaps he just is terribly screen deprived and will take it in any form it comes.

So what about Mark? Since we've been married, he's given up corn dogs, sugared cereal and oreos. I would say this is maturity, though arguments could be made for a "maturing" metabolism. Whatever the reason, it's nice to know our whole house will keep getting older, grayer, and hopefully wiser, all together.