That A-Ha moment!

Being a parent is hard work but to me, it is worth every moment of every day.

The one thing I loved about being a mom when my daughter was growing up, were all those moments that I taught her something and got to see that light bulb go on and knew she got it.

One distinct memory I have of my daughter learning something big was the difference between the sun and moon. She was a year and a half and already talking full, complete sentences, potty trained and off the bottle. She knew what she wanted and went for it. The funny thing is that she still does at almost 29.

We had to leave Connecticut as my husband, at the time, got a job back in California. We decided to drive back cross country, which was in itself an amazing trip, and we did it in about 11 days.

We originally were going to drive through the nights so I had day shift and he had night shift but eventually we realized that we were missing out on showing our daughter places we were passing, so we stopped each night after the third night so that we had time to visit places for a short time.

Around 4am in the morning, on our fifth day, we got on the road. It was October and a little chilly but we had our coffees and my daughter had her warm milk in a big tippy cup, as she called it.

She and I were already very close then so it was usual for us to start talking once we got into the car. She was doing her usual, "what's that, momma?" as she pointed to different things we passed after we settled in for the drive of the day. I answered as I looked and if she asked for more info, I gave it to her.

Suddenly, she beamed as she looked to my right and said, "Oh, momma... SUN!" It was getting light out so I looked over and noted that it was the moon she was looking at, so I said, "no, baby doll, that is the moon."

She looked confused because it was getting light out (about 6:30am) and I was not doing our usual game of acknowledging the sun when it was day and the moon when it was night. So she repeated, "sun." I again said, "no, that is the moon." I realized that she only knew them in the context of what I had taught her but she never knew that they were separate planets.

We would go outside in the morning and have our breakfast in the backyard under our tree with the sun overhead or eat dinner under the moon with candles and with the lights in our tree. (We kept the tree covered in white lights year-round as she loved them.)

I noticed that outside the window on her dad's side as he drove, the sun was rising so I pointed it out to her and said, "that is the sun." Immediately, she turned her head towards the sun and her eyes grew wide. She looked over to my side and saw the moon. So she asked very hesitantly while pointing back to the sun... "Sun?"

I answered her, "yes, that is the sun," then pointed to the moon on my side and said, "that is the moon."

She was quiet for a few minutes, kept looking back and forth between the sun and the moon, then I saw that light come on in her eyes.

She suddenly got that there are TWO of them and they had their own names. The sun was out during the day and the moon was out during the night.

Excitedly, she pointed to each and repeated their names several times to be sure she had them right and I acknowledged her each time. She then asked why there was two. I had to make up a story that the sun worked hard all day to keep us bright that it had to go night night so the moon took over but it was not as bright as the sun so we had some dark to go with it.

She looked over to the moon and said, "night night, moon," and fell asleep, content.

As I said, I love being a mom and moments like that made it all worthwhile. I cannot wait to be a grandma and in my daughter and son-in-law's words... it will be soon. Yay for me!