I am growing up?

When did I grow up? How did this happen? It feels like only yesterday I was playing barbies with my best friend, Anna, at my house in Lakewood. It is crazy for me to think that I have gone to school, graduated from college, had a career, got married to my best friend- John, and had a gorgeous baby girl- Burke. I still have "those feeling" every now and then, like everyone does... I feel like I'm this little girl "looking in" on what seems to be my life. I feel like one day I'm just going to wake up and be 10-years-old. It is so strange to me to think that when I was nine, Anna and I use to "play teenagers & college" ...we were 18! The weird part is I am NOW 10 years OLDER than what we were pretending to be! Oh, to be able to use my imagination like that again!

Speaking of imagination... where did it go? It seems today, that our lives are so planned out so monopolized by technology that we don't have time to daydream about who we are or what we want to be. We are so caught up with out video games, tweets, you tube and Facebook that we forget to "leave a little mystery " to our lives. We forget that when we were in 4nd grade we were unstoppable and were going to be an astronaut, a writer or a doctor. Now we are hoping and day dreaming about MARRYING a doctor. When I was young, Anna and I use to draw maps that led to basically no where and would ride from one house to the other on our bikes all over the neighborhood. With the way that society is .... sadly, I can't see myself allowing Burke to do the same, times have changed.

Do not get me wrong, I am still that fun loving, free-flowing girl that will talk to anyone and everyone and I see those traits in Burke. My issue, is that the world has changed and it's not just one person that is the odd-ball that stands out in the neighborhood. There are many people that unfortunately, you can not trust and you need to LOOKOUT for your children. I never understood that until I became a parent. (Yes, I know mom, I am eating my words from when I was younger!) I was the kid that just wanted to "GO"... go anywhere...I just wanted to experience the world. Now I understand why my parents had to restrain me from being "too friendly" to everyone. It was not me, it was the other people. I just see it now with Burke. She is friendly, social and has so much love to give that it scary to be a parent.

I just want to know what happened. I know I always wanted to be a parent, but I never expected another human to consume my life like she has. I just feel like I want to be with her all the time. I know I need to start to pull away a little and let her experience life for herself and I need to regain my life, but I just love being with my family. I will start to do new things and have my own experiences again. I have already started... I took a trapeze class a couple of months ago and next month I am going to take a cake decorating class. I can not wait to start class but until then, John Burke and I are just going to have a great time out while all the other kids are back in school!