I have seen the future...

and it is my babysitter.

So, yesterday a truck chose to become "engulfed in flames" on the Bay Bridge translating into more than a few unpleasant things in my world -- the most annoying of them was the complete and total inability to get to my toddler (which was disconcerting as well since this is the first time I've ever not been able to physically get to my kid. It wasn't panic inducing, or anything, because I knew she was safe at her daycare -- just frustrating knowing that I was massively inconveniencing them and that I would end up having to pay upwards of thrirteen thousand dollars in late fees) but after several panic-ey type phone calls I was able to reach her current "while-I'm-in-class" sitter who lives on that side of the Bay and was able to go get her. (Quick thanks re: the amazing luck that it is mine to have that she was cool with that kind of bizarre request when basicaly she's only known us for three weeks and that she had the time and a car!) Anyway, we ended up at Mills picking up the little one and BabySitter was there with her friends and it just struck me all upon a sudden how very young they are. Now I look at my big girl and she's aging years every time a freaking minute goes by and I look at these fresh, earnest, well-scrubbed young people who are in college fer chrissakes and they just seem really really young. So, my question is at what point do they stop "growing up to fast" and start "not being near grown enough?"

There were three of them in this group. The middle one (my KidSitter) seemed alot like my Boo -- aware, calm, smart, plesant and polite but not particularly forthcoming. Her friend was that girl -- the one who likes to interact with adults, in fact feels they're more her equal than the children she has to surround herself with normally, also super young looking but trying to act in a more mature/sophisticated way. Then the last was the cuter, more puppy-like, nice but not super-sure what you're supposed to say when you're pulled into a conversation with some random adult and her two kids. I was looking at these kids and at the ways they interacted with me and i realized that this little group was Boo and her friends not too long from now. And that while that was comforting (because, really, they all seem relatively secure in their own skins -- meaning, i guess, that none of them really expect that the world is going to be screwing them over any time soon) it was also wierd because it is, in some ways COMPLETELY foreign to the environment in which I grew up. These kids are not wary. they are not anxious and they are not in need of "options" -- i'm not saying they don't have problems but they don't have the problems we had growing up. And, it kind of just occurred to me, neither will my Boo. Which is good -- kind of what I guess we're all working toward but which also means, there's going to be a point where I will have no idea what's she's up against. God. i hope she keeps talking to me.

In other news, i gave Boo the "Who's cuter" test (aka "Is preference genetically determined") by flashing pictures of these two popular cuties:




and





She, of course, being ma ba-bee, unhesitatingly chose Chad proving beyond a shadow of a doubt (at least until Spark is old enough to indulge her Mommy's weirdness) that this kind of stuff is innate. For the record, we both also agreed that Bow Wow




is just soooo much cuter/looks like he'd be more fun to play with than Lil Romeo