My Children Are Growing Up!

The headline for this entry pretty much says it all. As I mentioned in yesterday's post, we went to the Cincinnati Museum Center and the girls were NOT interested in the Children's Museum where they used to play all of the time and instead wanted to go to the Cincinnati History Museum, a place they showed absolutely no interest in until recently. It made me realize they were growing and changing.

I had the same feeling last night when Lisa and I took the girls to the Florence Mall. We used to visit the Florence Mall all the time when we lived in Florence. We do so much less now, mostly because a) We no longer live in Florence, making the mall quite a bit further away (When we lived on Tamarack Drive in Florence the mall was less than 2 miles from our house.) and because b) The Crestview Hills Mall is now open and is so close to where we live now.

So it had been a long time since we'd been to the mall, and Lisa and I both commented on how much the girls had changed from back when we used to go at least twice a month if not weekly. When the girls were smaller, their favorite places were as follows:

1. The Children's play area, which contains a number of soft playground-like pieces of equipment in the shape of various animals. We would spend the majority of our time in the play land when the girls were toddlers. Last night I noticed that Natalie was about twice as tall as the "You must be at least this SMALL to use this play area" sign.
2. The Walt Disney Store. The girls loved the stuffed animal display in the back of the store.
3. When they got a little older, they loved the Build a Bear workshop. In fact, one of them had her birthday party there one year, but I can't remember which I can't remember when.

Yesterday, though, here were their favorite stores:

1. The Limited, Too, which is a pre-teen clothing store. The store blasts teeny bopper music over its audio system and has clothing choices that are noticeably "older" in style than the clothes I'm used to my kids wearing (no Barney t-shirts at Limited, Too).
2. Libby Lu, which is similar to The Limited, Too, but focuses more on accessories than clothing.

Both stores featured Hannah Montanna pretty heavily, as well as a group called the Jonas Brothers. Meredith confided in me, "Yeah, pretty much all of the girls at school think the Jonas Brothers are awesome!"

So the girls are growing up; what else is new? They've been growing up all along. They quit watching Blues Clues a long time ago, and it's been years since anyone in our house has hummed any tunes from Sesame Street. We quit reading Dr. Seuss a long time ago in favor of Magic Treehouse books and then Harry Potter books after that. This time, though, the changes that are coming seem bigger, more intense. I hope they're able to handle them.

I hope I can, too.