They grow so fast. . .

L, my youngest, is a total mommy's girl and wants to snuggle all the time, although lately she's been having potty training pains and is obsessed with having her tush wiped with a moist towel (not that scratchy dry recycled stuff, thank you very much!). Other than the fact that I have to make about 200 trips to the bathroom with her every day, she is my little joy bug.

K is my big girl who looks at me with the same eyes I used to see in the mirror when I was her age. She's just turned 5 and already she's alarmingly competent at stuff like riding her bike around the neighborhood, getting down the big scissors from the top shelf, and all sorts of other things I don't want her doing. Today she went outside to play and came back in tears because the big girls and her best friend went off to share some secret that she wasn't allowed to listen in on. I just hugged her because what could I say? How can you make a 5-year-old understand that the same thing happens when you grow up but you learn to care a bit less?

But little girls are resilient. Ten minutes later all was well and all the girls spent the next hour laboriously creating a little 'jewelry shop' with handmade products cleverly formed out of blades of flowers, blades of grass and fall leaves. They were hanging on display all over the play structure. I wish I had a picture because they were quite lovely but the I couldn't find my camera.

It seemed I had walked into a scene from an earlier era, when kids played with things they found outside instead of expensive, lead-infested plastic toys. Is this the German influence? The Disney princesses are definitely known in Germany, although they don't have quite the same market foothold here. Or is it just the age?