Flower Girl Duties

A whole new parenting feeling arrived for both Barry and me this past Saturday afternoon when we watched Maggie pull of a perfect version of being a flower girl when Jeff and Courtney got hitched. We’ve practiced a zillion times at home and these photos prove that we practiced before the ceremony. (Don’t worry, Fashion Police, Barry didn’t wear jeans! We changed later. Mags had to be there early for photos.). We watched YouTube videos of other flower girls and talked at length about what would actually go down.

I wasn’t prepared for how nervous I would get watching her walk down the aisle and what it felt like to see her do something completely on her own. I can’t even begin to imagine what it will be to watch her  participate in a sport, speak publicly or do anything beyond this first flower girl trip down the aisle. I could not have been more proud of her as she slowly made her way to Brian, who was one of the groomsmen, and dumped out handfuls of petals….finally ending with a huge dumping of the remaining petals in front of Jeff, the groom.

Brian had Skittles in his pocket which enticed her to stay up front for the ceremony, but after she spotted Barry’s parents, she hit the road. Regardless, I was one proud mama. It got me thinking about the urge I fight to want to help Maggie sometimes to speed up the process of whatever it is we’re doing (cooking, getting in the car seat, setting the table, etc.). She’s been reminding me with a swift, “NO, I DO IT!” that she is fully capable and willing to do grown-up-ish tasks.

Seeing her head down the aisle with white and yellow petals floating around her, I felt like she was totally on her own doing exactly what we’d practiced, talked about and prepared for. Perhaps that is the bigger lesson here: parenting, mixed with a whole lot of love, patience and nurturing, is really about practice, communication and attempting to prepare our children for the bigger picture, the bigger world, really.

*Video coming in a following post. Prepare your head to be turned to the side, unless I can get Barry-Miller-Tech-Wizard to help me out.