Two weeks until 18.

I don't know how my mother did it. I don't know how she raised three girls, two of them being only two years apart. I only have one daughter, but now I am really starting to realize exactly what it means to have a daughter.

She is two weeks from being ten. TEN! Aaaaggghhh!!! Where has the time gone? Ten is double digits. Next thing I know, she'll be fourteen and going to high school and her first homecoming dance. Time has got to slow down...just for a bit at least.

Wednesday nights on ABC is probably the best night of tv ever. The Middle, Modern Family, Cougar Town....so hilarious. So on Cougar Town the other night, Jules' (Courtney Cox) son left for college, which left her in a complete disarray. As funny as the show is, and as I was laughing out loud at most of the humor in the episode, I received a text from my best friend that said "that's totally gonna be you when Kalyn goes to school if you don't have another kid." Oh my gosh, thank you for reminding me of that! So then my life skipped from her being 9 1/2 straight to 18. It scares me beyond belief to even think about the day when she leaves me, when she moves out on her own, when she isn't under my roof everyday and every night. She often tells me she will live with me until she's 30. I'm ok with that. She also tells me I can go to college with her. I'm ok with that. I want to protect her from the big bad world out there. I don't want her bullied. I don't want her to become like some of the rude and hateful little girls I see on a daily basis. I don't want my daughter to be the girl that everyone says is rude, hateful, stuck up, and a royal B. That's not her and that's not the child I have raised.

So anyways, back to the second part of the problem on the show and the second part of the text. Jules is 40 and losing her only child, thus sending her into a nervous breakdown, of sorts, from dealing with him leaving. What if Kalyn is it? What if I only get the chance to have this one child? I don't want to be one of those selfish people when there are women out there who will never be able to have a child, but I do want another child. I guess there's always the sperm bank! Ha! Just joking. If Kalyn is the only child I am meant to have then at least I have done my best thus far to raise her in the right way and teach her to value the important things in life.

I am so glad I had a girl. I wouldn't know what to do with a boy. Having three sisters, all female cousins, and being a girl myself, it just seems natural and easier this way. However, as Kalyn gets older, I know the next few years will bring those changes that I'm not sure I am ready to face. She's already asking for a padded bra. Do they even make a padded bra in her size? Really? Oh, I'm not ready for it all. Let's go back to diapers, bottles, and pacifiers. Let's go back to when she could sit on my lap or lay on my chest and we would sleep for hours at a time.

My little girl is not my little girl anymore. Now, she is two weeks from ten, soon she will be two weeks from 18.