8 Minute Memoir – Day 5 – Little Things

The thing is, the thing about having a kid, is that it’s the little things that break your heart. The little pants and socks and shoes. I used to wash and fold giant-sized loads of baby-sized clothes and marvel. Isn’t it weird? I’d say to my husband, that we have such a tiny roommate? That we live with such a little person? The irony is, kids can’t play with little toys until they’re big, on account of they might try to eat the toys and die. As my baby grew bigger, her toys got smaller. We showered her in whole families of Calico Critters, rabbits and badgers and goats and bears with little hammocks to sleep in and little produce to eat. DUPLO became LEGO Friends became a million tiny bricks that fuck up my feet. My daughter is still little, just in first grade, but somehow also very big. She is more than half as long as my husband. He holds her still because we didn’t have another little and wraps her monkey arms in a stranglehold around his neck, her long hobbit feet dangling somewhere around his knees. She is too heavy for me to lift for more than a minute, so I can’t do that. Instead, I hold her little hand.