Nearing the End of an Era

This is what I did today. I cleaned out the drawer that I have loathed for 12 years. The sippy cup drawer. And sadly, when I cleaned these out of there and decided to throw them away, I felt grief. I was actually going to miss washing, matching lids (very important!) filling and delivering chocolate milk to my two boys with these. There was a heaviness in my chest as I looked at them all lined up on the counter. I've still got some sippy cups, don't you worry. But the remainders have princesses and Minnie Mouse on them. And they are rarely used. My littlest girl doesn't really care for sippy cups. She wants to be big like all the rest of the people around here. So I put these into a bag, and then, I sat them on the floor of my pantry behind the garbage can. Not in it, behind it. I couldn't bring myself to get rid of these little reminders of my boys being little.

Mind you, I'm way overdue to do this job. Wyatt is 7 1/2. Sam is 5. No one should be using a sippy cup at these ages, I'll admit. But the clean freak inside of me thinks my carpet is better off having used them all these years. I'm just not as good as other moms at keeping food only inside of my kitchen. And, to be honest, I like to remember the times when they first started using sippy cups and we got rid of our ba-ba's. It was such a step into big-kidhood when we threw those bottles away. But I was sad then, too. As a mother, you get a first hand look at all the stages of childhood, and some of those stages seem to drag on forever. When you're up to your elbows in multiple diaper changes, feedings, and nighttime waking, it seems like those days will never end. You sort of lose the forest for the trees sometimes. But those days do end. You move on from Blues Clues to Star Wars, from blocks to Legos, from baby to boy. And when you get sad about your children changing seemingly overnight, just take a picture of the sippy cups, look at it with some pictures of your babies, and have a good cry.