Being a mom....

As a parent, we all want to do everything that we can to shield our children from the harshness of the world and protect them from everything that could potentially hurt them. There are also times when we HAVE to let them go out and experience things while you sit in the background, waiting in the wings while biting your fingernails to little stubs and sweating and crying and dying a little bit and sprouting white hairs... You get the idea.
It's probably one of the most difficult things to see and experience. Watching what once was your squishy little baby gaining more independence and doing more and more things for themselves. And of course, coming to the realization then that despite the fact that you want to, you can't protect them from everything. And what parent hasn't wished that they could take a pain or some kind of suffering from their child and take it on as their own.
You instill in them EVERY bit of "wisdom" that you can and hope and pray that despite the fact that it looks like they're not listening, they did HEAR you and that those nuggets of information are rattling around in their heads somewhere and that when the time comes, they'll be able to call upon it and USE it. You hope and pray that you have helped them to build the strong foundations for them to be fine, upstanding people.
I guess it's always going to be that I see my children as squishy little babies despite how big or how old they get. And I'm always going to want to shield them and protect them despite the fact that they say, "Mo-o-o-o-o-o-om!!! Come o-o-o-o-o-on! Sto-o-o-o-o-o-p!!!!"
They'll become parents too someday... That's when I'll be able to point and laugh and say, "Bwa ha ha ha ha!!!!! NOW you get it!"