Growning Up

Last week I was at the grocery store with Kendra. She was sitting in the seat (I had to bribe her to get her to sit). Suddenly she got a sad face and started crying. When I asked what was wrong she said, "I don't want to grow up." We agreed that being a kid is a lot of fun, but there were still more tears. "But, I don't want to grow up." She was sad that when she is grown up, she won't be able to play with her cousins anymore. I assured her that she could still play with her cousins even when she is big. But she still cried some more. We agreed that we could play and have a ton of fun so that we could have as much fun as possible, but she still knew that eventually she would grow up...More tears. Then she said, "When we eat good food we grow up big and strong." Red flags went up. I could see her boycotting food so that she could stay little. We talked about it and decided that we love food too much to stop eating. (Whew!) I suggested that I could give her lots of hugs and squeezes every day and maybe the squeezes would keep her small. She's not totally convinced that it will keep her from growing up, but we both agree that it's a pretty good idea... we are trying it.