This year has been a challenge. Parenting any age has its challenges, but the past year — well, that’s not true; I’d say the past six months or so, really — has been particularly challenging for me.

Stinkerbelle is five. Just turned five. And so, SO much happens around five. And, a lot does not happen yet. And it all takes work.

I feel like we are in an endless rush, and yet we are going very, very slowly.

The rush comes in that there is so much going on now with our girl. She’s in school. She’s in various sports classes and developmental classes and whatnot. She’s constantly wanting to make play dates and go outside. She wants to help with everything. She has homework. She goes to the library. She’s learning to print. She’s singing along to songs. She’s mastering swimming and riding a scooter.

There are also many appointments and meetings and visits with teachers and service providers and therapists and people who are helping her get to the next hurdle: kindergarten in September.

There’s so much going on, all day long, all the time. It’s dizzying.

But the other part, the going slowly part, comes in that she’s not quite independent yet. Sometimes because of her age, and sometimes because of her challenges, and sometimes just because of who she is. She’s an endless barrage of questions verifying the minutiae of every step we take in everything we are doing. She wants to be independent with putting on shoes and printing her letters and setting the table and doing her homework, but she’s not quite there yet. She needs guidance and reassurance and help. The days are filled with bellowed questions about IS THIS THE RIGHT FOOT MOM and WHERE DOES THIS GO MOM and ARE WE GOING THIS WAY MOM. Even playing by herself involves being around or beside me (or her dad) or having something touching me and talking to me the entire time.

She’s completely independent, as long as she has one of us RIGHT THERE to talk to and help her.

It’s been really challenging. We’re also at the part of the show where we are slowly trying to claw back a little bit of “me” time, to fit in exercise or get some work done around the house or read a book – or hey, get this, POST ON MY BLOG — or whatever, but she’s not quite ready to fly solo yet.

She is, in so many ways. And in so many ways, she isn’t.

And then, come September, she’ll walk out the door and we’ll walk to school and she’ll walk in that front door and suddenly, for six or seven hours of my day she’ll be gone.

And honestly, I’m ready to fly solo, too, but in so many ways, I am not.

Don’t get me wrong, I am LOVING the fact that she is off to kindergarten in September. She NEEDS to go. Stinkerbelle is the most social kid I have ever known, and she will love to spend her days surrounded by other children. Plus, she loves school and she wants to go and learn SO much. She will love the structure and the stimulation and the learning. She will thrive.

I know she will miss us. And for the first days or weeks, she will check in periodically with her teacher, just to confirm that her Mommy will come and get her at the end of the day, or that her Daddy will be bringing cheeseburgers and french fries and OMG ROOTBEERPOP home on eat-out night.

And I will miss her too. The house will be quiet, and although the time will be my own, to do all these things that I have been needing time to do over the past five years, I am also acutely aware that who I am and what I do has been defined by her presence and her needs and her love over the past five years.

I will feel her absence keenly in some ways for a little while.

But we are not there yet. And while I am excited for her to start school, frankly, I am in no rush to get there.

I am looking forward to the end of her JK time, and various lessons and classes and appointments, next month. I am looking forward to the start of summer, to enjoy the last two months of our time together, just us. Yeah, she will make me crazy, but that is okay. Because I know I will miss her when it is done, and this time will not come again.

We are taking the last few steps towards the end of the time I had always dreamed about having with my daughter. And we are taking the last few steps toward the first few steps on her next big adventure, and our next big adventure as a family.

It has been another week of sickness here, starting with barfing on the weekend, and progressing to diarrhea for the last two days. Which means I have been cleaning up some pretty vile things emitting from a certain small person a great deal this week. So that’s been fun.

But we have had some pretty good moments, and before I collapse into bed, I shall relate one to you.

The other morning (after the barfing had passed, but before the diarrhea had commenced), I laid out some clothes for Stinkerbelle on her bed while she was downstairs eating her breakfast. Once she came upstairs again, I told her to go in and get dressed. She likes to do this, “ALL. BY. MYSELF.” as we are regularly reminded. So I sat down at my desk and started to check email.

Stinkerbelle began to strip off her jammies, and soon a small nudenik was walking past my door on her way to get dressed. A few moments passed, and then the small naked kid appeared in my doorway.

“Mom”, said That Girl, “can I ask you something?”

“Sure,” I said, turning from my computer.

Stinkerbelle came in, in her altogether, and sat down on the carpet in front of me. She said, “I was putting on my panties, and…” At which point, she splayed her legs out and started futzing about with her undercarriage. Showing me, I might add, all that Nature had given her.

“And I saw…” she said, pointing at her nether regions, “um… What is this?”

I fought with every fibre of my being not to dissolve into hysterical laughter right on the spot. Because every parent KNOWS that the time for That Talk is coming, but you are never REALLY prepared for it. I mean, you THINK you will handle it with great calm and dignity and appear cool. But the reality is, you rarely do.

Which I can tell you, I certainly didn’t. I probably did alright though, and kept the silent-laughter-shoulder-shaking and tears rolling down my face to a minimum.

“Well,” I began, as all good and calm and relaxed discussions of one’s personal regions surely MUST begin, “that is what makes you a girl. That’s a vagina.” Which I know in actual fact is not REALLY what it is — vulva, vagina, clitoris, women’s parts are so complicated, AND BELIEVE YOU ME, SHE WAS SHOWING ME SHE HAD THEM ALL — but that is, for the sake of ease, the catch-all term we’re going to go with at this time.

(Also, it’s not the ONLY thing about being a girl, but DUDE. We’ve got YEARS of this stuff ahead of us.)

So then I continued about how “boys are made differently, and they have a penis.”

“Penis,” she repeated, trying the word out. “Vagina” was too complicated to try, apparently.

“So boys don’t have this?” she asked.

“Nope,” I said.

“But Charlotte has this?”

“Yes,” I confirmed. “Charlotte is a girl, so she has a vagina.”

“And does Jamie have this?” she asked.

“No,” I said, “Jamie is a boy, so he has a penis.”

“But Daddy has this?” she wondered.

“Nope, Daddy is a boy, so he has a penis.”

“But I don’t have a penis,” she confirmed.

“No, you have a vagina. Girls have vaginas.”

“Vagi…” the word trailed off into a mumble.

So I began telling her how boys and girls are different, and was starting to get into how girls have vaginas and breasts and… I didn’t get far.

She stood up, and with great gravity said, “I should go back to my room now.” And walked out.

Clearly I am going to need to work on my delivery before she hits puberty.

Today was one of those days where I felt like I need to be better. At things. Lots of things. But mostly at being a good person.

Two things happened today that made me feel the need to do better. The first occurred when I picked up Stinkerbelle from her carer’s house after work. When Stinkerbelle came down to get her gear on to head home for the day, her carer Fran told me about how That Girl and Fran’s little girl had gotten into trouble earlier today.

The two of them were in the bedroom, where they were supposed to be snuggled up watching a movie. Instead, they had gotten into a tub of Vick’s Vapo Rub and had been schmearing it all over their faces, in their hair, and on their clothes.

I reprimanded Stinkerbelle, not angrily, but sternly. She burst into heartfelt, apologetic sobs.

After a long, quiet ride home, during which I considered that Vick’s wasn’t harmful, nobody got hurt, and it was really kind of funny, I got on the computer and debriefed with BDH. He reminded me that Stinkerbelle is four and four year olds get into stuff, and it really was funny.

And I admit that much of my frustration stems from the fact that I am the one who has to deal with Stinkerbelle’s long, thick hair on a regular basis, so her having a head full of Vaseline just means that I have to put in two or three hours washing, combing, and restyling it, when I just did it two days ago. And that’s selfish.

And I admit that I am hard on my girl. I am strict and I expect her to behave herself and remember her manners and take turns and Do All Those Things. I see too many parents let too much slide and I am not going to let Stinkerbelle be one of those kids. And so I am hard on her.

But she really, really IS a very, very good girl 99% of the time, and I admit that I have to let up and let her be a kid and screw up like a normal kid in that 1% of the time. Or more, even.

And I let her down. On a day when she got into a mess AS KIDS WILL DO and had fun doing it, I could have just let it go and let her enjoy it. Instead, I left her sad and feeling fraught with shame and guilt for being A Bad Girl.

The second thing that made me feel I should be better was around dinnertime, when I heard the doorbell ring. I thought it was BDH, but when I got to the door there was a man on the porch. He was small-ish, and it was hard to tell how old he was. But he was polite, and introduced himself as Tyler, and said he was canvassing for the local addiction recovery charity. And he showed me his badge, his ID.

Now, because I am home alone with That Girl during the day, whenever I answer the door, I have gotten into the habit of sizing up whoever comes to the door, and noticing what they look like or what they’re wearing. You know, JUST IN CASE. So I kind of tuned out what this fellow was saying for a moment.

It’s really, really cold here today. Arse-freezing cold. Lots of blowing and drifting snow. Wind chill. And dude, this guy’s not wearing any gloves. He’s got a toque on, sure, but the jacket’s kind of a canvas-y style thing. But the hood’s up, so that’s good.

But his pants. Oh my dog, his pants — they’d been split at some point, and they’re sewn together with a random colour of yarn. He’s got pants held together by yarn. And no gloves.

And he’s as polite and as meek as possible, and I tuned back in when he said “and anything you guys can contribute would be appreciated. Even a dollar, that would be helpful.” And because I have learned not to trust anyone at the door, I made a lame excuse, and I turned him away. And he very politely and meekly thanked me, and left.

Now, BDH reminded me when he got home and I mentioned it to him, this could have been a scam. The guy could have been a scam artist. He could have been collecting just for himself. But I have a hard time believing that a scammer is going to come around dressed that poorly in such weather. And so what if he was collecting just for himself — the man’s got no gloves and he’s wearing clothes HELD TOGETHER WITH STRING.

And I couldn’t spare him a couple bucks.

I felt really badly about that, afterwards. I felt like I had let down my fellow man. I let down someone who might have needed a buck or two, or the organization he was doing charity work for on such a bitterly cold evening.

I let people down today. And in so doing, I let myself down.

I let myself down. I need to be better.

I can’t always help my fellow man — sometimes we just can’t afford the money or the effort or the time, I understand that. But sometimes we CAN, and I need to get better at maybe doing that.

And I can’t always be the perfect mom to my daughter. I can’t always be patient and calm and do the right thing and let her be. But sometimes I can, and I need to learn to do just that. I need to learn to be better for her, to be better to her, and to teach her by example to be better.

I need to learn to be better.