We have been reading J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan out loud at night in preparation for Halloween, since the girls are dressing up as Wendy, Tiger Lily, and Tinkerbell. I highly recommend rereading this book as an adult, I am really enjoying it, although I must admit at times the subject matter hits a little too close to home. This is how the very first chapter begins:
"All children, except one, grow up. They soon know that they will grow up, and the way Wendy knew was this. One day when she was two years old she was playing in a garden, and she plucked another flower and ran with it to her mother. I suppose she must have looked rather delightful, for Mrs. Darling put her hand to her heart and cried, "Oh why can't you remain like this for ever!" This was all that passed between them on the subject, but henceforth Wendy knew that she must grow up. You always know after you are two. Two is the beginning of the end."
So I powered through the above paragraph with my voice cracking and my eyes watering and a few curious glances from my girls and finished the first chapter, the very end of which is marked by Peter Pan's encounter with a startled Mrs. Darling. This is how the first chapter ends:
"He was a lovely boy clad in skeleton leaves and the juices that ooze out of trees; but the most entrancing thing about him was that he had all of his first teeth. When he saw she was a grown up, he gnashed the little pearls at her."
Immediately after finishing this sentence I closed the book and Lili began to wiggle her two very loose front teeth. She actually managed with a lot of effort (accompanied by a horrible squelching sound,) to shift the looser of the two a millimeter to the right. It seems to be holding in its new position, but I know that its days, if not hours, are numbered, so I had to take one last picture of my own little Wendy in her own little nightgown with her beautiful baby teeth. Lili seems to be right on the cusp of being more big kid than little kid, with her big kid feet and smelly soccer socks and ever-increasing self-sufficiency. I guess she has a good many nights in the nursery left, and hopefully if she is anything like her beloved Uncle Jon she will never forget the way to Neverland, but little kid or big kid, she IS rather delightful.
P.S. I'm sorry if I am beginning to sound like a broken record with the "My kids are growing up too fast!!" stuff....I'll try to write something different next time...maybe I will collaborate with Emily and make a "Top Ten Funniest Things Lili and Jack's Classmates Have Said to Us at Lunch Duty" list...
