The Dog Loves Me More

Gracie turns 11 this Friday.

My sweet little girl is now a preteen. Sigh.

It makes me think back to my preteen years and ugh, it was not pretty.

Luckily Gracie is nothing like me. She’s pretty laid back and mostly a Tom boy. She has a small amount of girl friends but more friends that are boys. You can tell she doesn’t do girl drama and for that I’m thankful. I was a drama girl when I was her age and I’m surprised my parents didn’t send me away to boot camp.

I’m pretty sure that Gracie’s teen years are going to be filled with way less drama than Bobby’s teen years have been so far.  Oh. My. God. If I knew then what I know now about boys being dramatic at that age, I would of played things so much different.

The fact is, I’m losing my little babies.

I feel like I lost my “Mommy” connection” with Bobby when he turned 12. I’m not sure if that’s the way it goes with boys and their moms but it kills me. Over the last few months we’ve been able to salvage a bit of our relationship but I’m pretty sure we won’t really connect again until after college. It’s not that I’m o.k. with that but he has a good relationship with my husband so that gives me comfort and it’s just something I have to accept right now or doom our relationship forever.

Gracie and I, on the other hand, have a great relationship. Even though she’s growing up and her life is becoming more interesting and filled with new things, I still feel that we are connected. I feel that she knows she can talk to me because we have our secret girl talks. I know she doesn’t tell me everything but she tells me a lot.

I’m at a point in their life when I hold on to everything that I can. With Bobby it’s the very limited times he still calls me Mama, which has drastically decreased over the last year. Or when he sits on the floor with me when I play with the dogs. I love when he does that. It’s like he’s trying to connect with me in the only way he knows how right now.

With Gracie it’s our bedtime ritual. Every night she still wants me to tuck her in. I come in and sit on her bed and have a little chat. The chat always end with a hug and a kiss, a big M-Wha and a back and forth of “I Love You More.” We do this for several minutes.

For Christmas I bought her a sign to hang in her room that has the “I Love You More” saying on it. I told her that now I always have the last “I Love You” in. Of course then she picked out a sign for me to hang in my room so now we’re forever and ever tied in the battle.

The other night she said to me, ” I think that if love could be measured, Sherman loves you the most. Not that I love you less but if we could put all of our love for you in a glass , Sherman’s glass would fill up first.”

Jeez.

Nothing like throwing me into a fit of uncontrollable tears before I go to bed.

Is it selfish that I want 5 glasses of love labeled with names on them right now so I can see how much each glass would be filled? Yeah. It is.  It would probably not be in Bobby or Leroy’s favor either 😉

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