And my little girl is growing up (TMI, as if you couldn't guess)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

It started about two years ago, when I noticed that her shirt was not laying…shall we say…flat against her chest.

So we bought her a training bra. Then she outgrew that, and moved into A cups.

She discovered the joys of talking on the phone, and her dolls have been relegated to the corners to make room for earrings.

She has crushes on boys at schools, sighs about how “hot” they are, and did the ultimate 13-year-old girl stupid thing, rushed up to a boy, shoved a poem she wrote in his hand, and ran off. She won’t listen to me tell her how immature boys are at this age, and that she won’t be fully appreciated for her intelligence and beauty until she reaches college, buy maybe her older brother and father can get through to her.

Now we get to the TMI. If you’re familiar with teenaged girls, you know what happens next.

I’m on my way to work today when she calls my cell phone. “Mom!” she cries, “I woke up and my underwear was full of blood!”

Now, on Halloween, we’d had a “scare” as it were, because she saw blood on toilet paper, so I told her how to fit the pad and make sure she had a couple extra in her purse. But there was nothing more that night, and nothing yesterday. But this morning, apparently it started again, but nothing all day at school. From what I could tell on her underwear, it’s definite, and I think it will start to really flow tonight or tomorrow.

So, Ivygirl is no longer a little girl. I shall miss the tiny thing who scrubbed between her toes with her brother’s toothbrush, who came up with compound names for things (her new shoes were “comfeetable,” the dog was "cutiful) and who thought her brother walked on water. Now she reads voraciously, wants to try every new sport at school that comes up, and torments her brother to death (he does it back, so they’re even.)

She still has more growing up to do, but it’s started. Sigh.

Congratulations, sweetie.

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bump

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I’m only a sopohmore in college but 13 seems sooooooooooooo long ago.

I remember that horrible first day of the TMI situtation, liking stupid boys and passing notes in school. Thinking I was so old and cool. Hah!

Unfortunately not all the boys appreciate the brains yet…the big boobs and size 0 waist I don’t have, yes.

4

Is this the little girl I carried?
Is this the little boy at play?
I don’t remember growing older
When did they?
When did she get to be a beauty?
When did he get to be so tall?
Wasn’t it yesterday when they
Were small?
Sunrise, Sunset
Sunrise, Sunset
Swiftly flow the days
Seedlings turn overnight to sunflowers
Blossoming even as we gaze

Congratulations.

5

Ugh. I got my first one at the movies. With my little brother and two of his friends. I stuffed about a pound of toilet paper into my panties and just made it home.

Luckily, it started while I was on the toilet, and I noticed it on the TP.

6

Just out of curiousity, and not to offend you, but do you think your daughter would appreciate you talking about her period on here? I’m 17 and if my mother o much as whispered about mine to anyone, I would be incredibly embarrassed and upset. Its probably a hard time for her and she probably wouldn’t want any attention drawn to that kind of thing.

Oh well, thats my opinion.

7

Oh, your whole post is just the sweetest thing I have read in a long time. All of it, but especially this last part.

Please print it out to give to her in 10 or 20 years.

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Yes, congratulations ivylass, and thank you silenus bastard!! for making me tear up again. I’ve known since the day she was born that that song was going to be my first dance with the bus kid when she marries. At the time it seemed like a long long way off. But this December she turns 20 and I know it’s coming faster than I may be ready for it.

9

Ivylass, my daughter started her period on Halloween too, about 6 years ago. Isn’t that strange? It is an exciting time. I had preselected a special bracelet which I gave to her that day to honor her new womanhood. My daughter actually cried when the realization dawned that she was moving away from her innocence and childhood. Congratulations to both of you.

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Eek!!. My daughter is only 8 and you’ve got me tearing up.

ivylass great post, good luck, from all reports it only get harder for the next few years. At least as Mom you probably won’t be looked at as totally retarded until she gets through college, I have been told this is the normal fate for Dad.

Jim

11

Mine too.

And I always thought a bat mitzvah was a more tasteful way to mark the end of childhood than sentimentalizing bloody underwear.

Apologies for being a big wet blanket, but I found the OP more unsettling than touching. I guess you have to be a parent to understand getting misty about bodily functions.

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Yeah, it’s pretty much a parent thing. Sorry if you didn’t get it and it offends you. Different set of filters and all that.

And as Gentiles, we don’t have the option of an awesome religious ceremony like a bat mitzvah. Those “faux” bat and bar mitzvahs are tacky nonsense.

I like the bracelet idea, though.

Deb, who thought she wanted girls but got boys, and is now glad to have 'em! :slight_smile:

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Huh. I’m 15 and I got my first period when I was 13 and it seems so long ago…Congratulations, ivylass! I don’t think anybody congratulated my mother when I got my first period, though.

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Congrats to the Ivygirl. Welcome to the complexity and insanity of what we, hilariously enough, described to you young’uns when you were children as “the maturity and wisdom of adulthood”. Hah. Hold on to what made sense to you in 4th grade. You’ll be astonished to find how much of it once again sounds like absolute truth when you’re 40. Meanwhile… go get 'em!

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She doesn’t come here and read, so it doesn’t matter what I post. I’m not trying to embarrass her. I’m bragging a bit and sighing about how quickly time passes. Time really flies when you’re a parent. This is a “rite of passage,” and I think most mothers of girls (and maybe a few fathers) will understand.

16

Oh, how true.

I inherited The Teenage Terror when she was 6. She’s now 18 and a freshman in college. I remember her first period, but she was well prepared for it by SWMBO, so it wasn’t a big deal. She simply came out into the living room, flopped in a chair, sighed and said, “Oh, the joys of womanhood.” At 13, mind you, she’s a philosopher.

But what I really miss, believe it or not, is lying on the couch watching TV and looking up just in time to see a pair of bony little knees flying through the air headed for my midsection. Jumping on me knees-first was her favorite thing to do for a while; it usually led to a tickling session and then a hug and then she would curl up and watch TV with me. And I miss that.

'scuse me, I got something in my eye. Gotta find a Kleenex…

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::Belated congratulations to **dare_devil007’s ** mom!!::

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Understand?
Sometimes.

Regards,
Shodan

19

Has she screamed “I HATE YOU!” and stormed off to sulk in her room, but only after slamming the door so hard it knocked pictures off the wall?

No?

Oh, you’re in for a world of fun.

20

My particular work dynamics, coupled with long talks with neighbors, relatives and friends, have provided for an endless number of kid-related conversations suggesting that there’s a somewhat predictable pattern that little girls go through growing up. At some point, probably around that of which the OP mentions, I’m going to lose my little girl. Gone will be coming to daddy with the childish entheusiasm and endless questions about every little thing encountered. Gone will be her immodesty in the bathroom (both hers and ours) and gone will be, and probably most sadly, the way she turns to me and shares everything, and I do mean everything, that’s on her mind. Her interests and free time will instead be on boys, changes in her body, best friends, fads, all the things a teenager does. Then, someday after what’ll undoubtably seem a lifetime, she’ll start coming back to ol’ dad again. Not in the same way as the past but, certainly, no less special. The questions and concerns will probably have an equal helping of opinion but I’ll marvel no less at her perceptions of the world.

Right now I’m enjoying her being little, relishing the time together and desperately trying to lock every bit of it away to be savored later. I’m already dreading the point at which she looks elsewhere for inspiration but certainly accept it’s necessity. And I’m hesitantly confident that that day will come when we again become pals and am curious about just who my little baby girl will then be.

I never knew I could possibly love something, my little someone, so much.