Dirty Little Secret #95

When Lizzy told me that she did not want to watch Little Bear, my heart nearly broke.

My baby has gotten so big. I find myself telling her stories about "when she was little." At just six, I know that she is still little.

But she's not.

She likes High School Musical and Barbies. She rides the school bus home with her friends. She counts to one hundred. And she doesn't want to watch Little Bear anymore.

Honestly, I don't remember when we last watched Noggin. But when she was only ten months old, we started watching Little Bear, every day at 5:30. We were tired by then, waiting for Daddy to come home. We would have spent the day walking, playing, waving to the shopkeepers and pretzel vendors throughout Yorkville. So Lizzy would sit in her favorite spot, in front of her three wicker toy baskets, and we would watch Little Bear.

Later, when we moved to Minnesota, it was one of the only familiar things that held her little world together. This strange new place had grass, a lot of cars, and strangely few people, but at least there was still Little Bear.

So today, when she arrived breathlessly home from playing at a friend's, she asked to watch TV while I made dinner.

"Sure," I told her. "It's 5:30. Little Bear is on."

"Oh, I don't want to watch that," she told me. "I want Buzz Lightyear."

"Really? When you were little, you loved watching this."

"Oh. I don't remember. Can we watch Buzz now?"

She's a big girl now, and not in the just-walking-losing-baby-fat-speaking-in-sentences big girl.

She doesn't sense the time passing. The memories are only mine.