Puberty, girls and the not-too-distant future

Lately, my sister is complaining about the age of her children. She loved having a 7-year-old step-son when she had a baby (she also has a little girl sandwiched between the oldest and youngest), but she has just come to realize that means she'll have a 9-year-old boy when the baby hits the terrible twos (which is only a month away). You see, the oldest boy has been demonstrating some tween attitudes lately ("I don't wanna wear the hood. I'll look like a dork." So he slams the door and refuses to wear the hood in the rain only to come home complaining that his hair curled when it got wet and looked, "Stupid," for the rest of the day).

That made me think about how old our oldest girls will be when this youngest one is 2. It just occurred to me that they will probably be in the early stages of puberty. They will be the same age I was when I started wearing a bra. Please give me a moment while I pick my jaw up off the floor.

The thought of my teeny tiny baby girls--my first borns, in bras scares the hell out of me. It makes me want to hug them close, smooth their hair and insist they can't grow up.

For the first year of their lives, my premie twins were so tiny and so developmentally delayed. I wanted nothing more than for them to grow and do new things. As our children approached their first birthday, other moms got nostalgic and weepy insisting their babies were growing up too fast. Not me. I glared at them urging them to gain a few more pounds; catch up developmentally and just grow, damn it. At a year, my preemies were 14 and 15 lbs, couldn't stand unassisted and didn't crawl (although they did low crawl).

Now, we're standing at the edge of puberty and I find myself in a very different (which I just accidentially typed as "difficult," hmmm...maybe not so much of an accident) situation. It suddenly occured to me that my little girls will one day be women.

When we found out the twins were girls, my husband was so excited. He loved the idea of two little girls. He comes from a family of boys. I told him then, just you wait until they hit puberty. Just wait until you have two moody pre-teen girls getting their periods. He laughed at me and shook his head.

We have no idea what we're in for. I want to be one of those cool moms who respects her daughters' privacy (no big red balloons or party hats that say, "Yay, you got your period."), but at the same time, celebrates with them when they hit that milestone. I just don't see how I can when I'm a blubbering mess at the thought of it.