a parenting bridge has been crossed

I can remember being in high school (maybe even Jr high school) having questions about my math homework. I would ask my mom for help and she would say, "wait for dad to come home I can't remember how to do that". At the time I thought it was strange because in my mind my mother knew everything (which is pretty much true). Now here I am a mother with my own four little babies and they are all so easily impressed. I can whistle a tune and they will ask in wonder, "how did you do that?" I can type something up on the computer and they are amazed with my speed. It seems to them that I can do everything. I can still run faster then all of them (I'm sure not for long), I can beat them every time in a game of tic tac toe, I can always find their missing shoe, and I am the family dictionary (thank goodness their vocabulary is still pretty immature). A couple of weeks ago things changed in the Clement household.

I have always been one of Jake's football buddies in the backyard, he likes when we throw the football back and forth to each other. I'm not very good but I would say in the beginning I was still better than my 5/6 year old and as he got better I was about as good as my 7/8 year old. Well sometime in the past couple of months Jake has definitely surpassed me in football throwing skills. He throws it harder, straighter, and with a much better spiral then I do. I also discovered that he is much better at yo-yoing than I am. These two realizations got me thinking, when did I become a mother of "older children"?

It so strange to have my kids get older and start "beating me" at different things. I mean believe me I want my son to be better at football than his mother, it just seems to have happened so quickly. One day they all were amazed at every silly thing I could do and now they seem to be slowly catching up to me. My Jake and Riley can both read their own bedtime stories now, all three of my older kids do their own tooth brushing and most of their hygiene stuff. As I write this I'm thinking to myself how silly this all sounds. I guess in our busy day to day lives I didn't realize how old they were getting. Then one day when I'm outside playing catch with my son it dawns on me (when he's trying to teach me a better way to hold the ball to make it spiral the way you want it to) that I am no longer able to impress him with my football skills. HE is the one that is impressing me. When did he get so old? So skilled? Other people have big kids... I have little kids. At least that's what I thought a couple of weeks ago. I guess I need to face the facts, I have graduated into being a mother of older kids. Any advice from you veterans out there?