What IS this feeling?

Here I sit in my PJ's at 8 am mulling over these parenting feelings that have hit me like a ton of bricks this morning. I have helped Molly shower, brush her teeth, fed her breakfast, made her lunch and her bus arrives soon to whisk her off to work for a few hours. Tonight she has a fun Halloween dance with Spencer where she gets to wear her Vampire outfit that we purchased when the first Halloween store popped up a few months ago. She kept pointing to her teeth when we talked about her costume. When I said "Vampire?" she nodded frantically. Next week I will devote an entire blog to all the Halloween festivities as there are a few more on the horizon. Today I muse about parenting.

We raise our children to grow and flourish on their own two feet. We want them to be independent and never return home to live in our basement once they set off for college. We love for them to trip and fall (well...not the helicopter parents) along the way so that lessons will be learned and we as parents are there to lift them up.

Brooke and I took the "Parenting with Love and Logic" classes that taught us to take the arguments out of lessons learned along the way. If you are not home at curfew, "What a bummer" and a consequence was thought about and imposed at a later time when we were not upset and Jack had time to worry what that consequence might be. Typically he had to be home a 1/2 EARLIER for every minute he was late. He learned quickly and is always home on time. He once found a grassy weed eater in his bed after "forgetting" to do that chore. He might have found a few dirty dishes in his bed too when his basement haven wasn't cleaned up after having been asked on too many occasions and we were finally sick of it.

That makes us sound way more badass than we really are as Jack mostly does what we ask of him in a relatively timely manner. We aren't pushed to throw down the "Because I'm the parent" card that often.

Today my almost 18 year old (next week) doesn't have school. It's a wild feeling that after years of coordinating, driving, fixing food and gentle reminding that he was out the door at 6 am to drive to the mountains to go skiing with his buddies. All without me doing ONE THING!

• He put his bindings on his snowboard (by himself)
• He set his alarm and got up on time (by himself)
• He made breakfast (by himself)
• He had his goggles/ski pants/coat/snowboard/ear buds/phone/ski pass/lunch for his pocket (I think)

He was out the door by 6 am (I was still sleeping in my cozy, warm bed)

So why am I even writing about this? Why do I feel.......I'm not even sure how I feel? Why does it feel like just a couple of years ago we were on our way for a ski weekend and had to turn the car around after driving for 15 minutes to go back to our house to get Jack's snowboard boots that he realized he hadn't packed? I think he was 5th or 6th grade.  How can I feel SO proud of him today in all of his independence and yet feel so sad all in the same moment?

I suppose that as moms we like to feel needed. Yet we also love when our kids can start doing things for themselves. Holding a bottle to feed themselves! AWESOME! Getting their own water from the water thingy on the frig. AWESOME! Turning on their own perfectly tempered water for the shower. AWESOME! Driving themselves to school. AWESOME! Doing their homework without you. AWESOME! I remember vividly fantasizing about when the kids would go off to college and I would finally have a little me space (they were 1 and 3 years old and we were in the thick of autism chaos). But now that we are on the verge of Jack moving on and I have gotten used to having them around, it's a different feeling. Maybe Jack should live in the basement? ;)

So I have one kid that will live with us forever (Molly) and one that is proving his independence and self reliance (Jack) and we should pat ourselves on our backs for how well we have done raising them both.

So why do I feel so.........midlife crisis? ;)