speaking of age (as usual)

 You see why this had to be a separate post. Although he is also not as cute as he seems. He's actually much cuter.
 It was his idea a few weeks ago to wear the flower to church so he would look like "a getting married guy." All part of his plan to win over the red-headed girl. I am not making this up. She kissed his hand as they walked down the aisle when dismissed for children's church. I've also had to tell Romeo here that no arms around the waist in church but I didn't have the heart to ban the hand holding. The hand kissing I haven't tackled yet.
  What I was thinking about today as I watched the other mom's picking kids up in the school cafeteria was how we're defined as mothers by the age of our youngest. Mothers' of infants, mothers' of toddlers then preschoolers, mother's of "school-age" children -which I don't believe includes teens since they have their own category. This means that there is this big jump from the preschool to school-age mothers. I might as well have a 12 year old. I've left forever the ranks of  "young mothers"- even if I hadn't really ever quite rejoined them. I could pretend, after all there has always been a little ambiguity about who the young referred to, mother or child. Now I'm afraid even my baby has figured out I'm not a young mother anymore. He knows I'm not quite like the other moms. When he recently saw an older, but not gray haired, woman with 2 probably grand-babies he eagerly asked her how old she was. She didn't answer, or look too happy and how could I explain he was hoping he'd found a mom who was also over 50 like his mom?     No longer the mother of a toddler, or even a preschooler but a full blown school-age child.
  So why I wonder do we spend so much time (and money) and attention, defining ourselves by it even - on this brief period in parenthood when all the rest goes on and on and on and on after that? Are we crazy? Is it marketing? Is it just because babies are cutest? Because if that's it I'm not so sure school-age can't give them a run for their money. On the other hand there's no denying there's nothing cute about what comes next. Been there done that.