The tug of war with(in) Reagan

Please take a second to watch this video before reading further.  It is a great song to sum up what is going on with Reagan right now.  To put it shortly, Reagan is growing up and in some ways this is such a struggle for me.

Reagan has always been my BFF.  I have written about it before and don't need to repeat it.  Lately, Brooke and I have seen a change in Reagan's attitudes and behaviors.  Some of it good, some of it bad, all of it just the course of nature.  I can see Reagan struggling with being my little (baby) girl and wanting to be a "young lady."  She gets angry when her mother and I treat her like a little kid, yet she gets sad when Baylor Grace gets to snuggle with me and there is no room for her. She can read like someone 2 years older than her (literally), which is fantastic.  However, that also means she wants me to read to her less.  It is surreal seeing her sit at the table with her bowl of cereal while she reads a book.  This is something she sees her Mimi do all the time.

One of the things I have always loved about my girls, particularly Reagan, is how she always wants to wear an elaborate princess dress to bed.  She wants to look exactly like a Disney princess.  In fact most of what she slips into for bed is a dress from a specific Disney character, see above.  Then, there are a few moments when she says she no longer wants to do that, that's for "little girls."  Or "whittle girls" as Baylor Grace calls them.   She occasionally has the eye rolling, the sassy attitude, and the smart mouth.  She is all girl.  Thankfully, her and I have a relationship to where when she realizes she has pushed my button the wrong way,  she right away feels bad.  Very much the same way I was/am with my father.

Just last night I called on my way home.  She answered the phone, which still takes me some getting used to, then eventually went to hand the phone to Brooke.  Instead of actually handing her the phone,  in a brief sassy because I can be moment, she short of threw the phone towards Brooke.  There was no ill will intended,  she just didn't think about it.   This is a bad equation all around (her throwing and Brooke catching) and the phone ended up smacking the floor.  Later on I picked up the phone to use it and it sounded like I was making a call from Apollo 13.  Our phone is broke.  I wasted no time into laying a guilt trip into Reagan.  Thats what we do, we tease.  At first she tried to deny it, but she quickly knew that her actions caused the phone to break.   She then disappeared.  I figured it was to go and pout somewhere because her parents were giving her a hard time.   She comes quickly down with the phone from upstairs (to change them out) and a $5 bill in hand.  She gave both to Brooke.  All the money she could get a hold of was the money her MaMaw and PawPaw had just sent her.  She wanted her mom to have it to help replace the phones.  She ran off to the playroom slightly embarrassed.  Honestly, it was a stand up thing for her to do, very mature.  Of course we didn't take the money, it was all really an accident on her part.  She was upset that we were upset and she wanted to make it right.  Something I totally respected.  We gave her the money back and explained the situation to her and she seemed much better.  Besides, we told her if we took the money that we could no longer tease her.  To us, that is priceless.

Next week we drop her off for her first day of first grade.  I remember like yesterday her first day of "two day twos."  I remember how sad I was to see her go.  She would only be gone a few hours but it felt like a life time to me.  To this day, I still don't do well with with dropping any of them off at school.  A part of me hurts every time.  

She is getting bigger, but she will always be my first "little" girl.  It was once my hand that she held when she walked.  Now she is holding the hand of her little sister.  She is growing up indeed.