Like a lot of little kids, Zoe has a fascination with babies. For many months, starting when she could first talk, she would point at a stroller (or anything that looked like a stroller, such as a shopping cart) and say, “ba-bee.” She loves cuddling and feeding her toy babies, and one of her favorite things to watch on TV (well, the only thing we actually let her watch on TV) is Go Baby, a 5-min, partially animated show about, yep, babies. And whenever she sees a real baby (like she did this weekend), she always runs up and starts to smile or jump around.

Like a lot of parents, I still consider my baby, well, a baby. But as I watched Zoe and Gabbie this weekend, and observed all the things that Zoe could do that this little 6-month-old couldn’t (walk, run, talk, laugh, point, grab things, etc.), I couldn’t deny it anymore: Zoe’s not a baby anymore. With all her newly acquired skills, she’s actually more like a little adult than she is a helpless baby, and it makes me sad/proud/nostalgic/excited all at the same time.

Now I know what all those people meant when they said kids grow so fast!

-M