Where does the time go? Let me tell you - July 6, 2012

My daughter turns five on Sunday. FIVE! That's a big one!

It's a common thing for people to say "Wow, where has the time gone?" when a child gets older, though.

"Wow, they grow up so fast!"

"Wow, just yesterday she was so little! They get so big, it's so sad."

And I hate that.

I'll tell you where the time has gone. It's gone to doctors and therapists and IEP meetings and pounds and pounds of paperwork.

When a kid turns five years old, most of the time there's a dramatic difference between how she acts now and how she was when she was five months old. In our case, that's not necessarily so. I mean, inside she's definitely the same as her five-year-old peers - there is no doubt about that. She reads, she understands, she communicates with us, she is quirky and funny and just so damn smart. But she can't walk, she can't talk. In some ways she's really not that much different - on the surface, it's definitely not that dramatic thing that other families may see.

I wish I could stop people from lamenting that she's getting older and start celebrating it. She's here! She's thriving! She makes progress every day! What will she be like at six? At ten? At 20? These things excite me!

Time does pass too quickly. I wish I could go back to when I didn't know my child had cerebral palsy and when I was just enjoying her babyhood, cheering on the milestones she was hitting (she hit them on time for months), and not worrying about whether the new specialist would be able to squeeze us in. But I am absolutely not sad about her turning five. I'm thrilled!

Let us all celebrate the children in our lives - the milestones they reach, the ages they turn - and enjoy every second, minute, hour we have with them, rather than looking back at how many of those have gone by, shall we?