Batman's Retirement

I finally decided to do it. I finally decided to clean out Grant's room. I decided to put away the things he never plays with anymore. This may seem like a normal thing for a mom to do, but it wasn't what I was doing that had me so upset. It was what I was cleaning out. 

The picture above is the infamous Batman costume worn by Grant.

For most kids this costume will only be worn once or maybe twice around Halloween.

 For Grant, this was his everyday apparel. This costume went grocery shopping with us. It has gone to football games. It's been worn during T-Ball games/practice. Everywhere.

This was my boy's identity for the last 6.5 years. 

I don't know if you know Grant, but if you do then you know he had somewhere around a thousand thirty superhero costumes. 

I was totally okay putting those away. After all, those superheroes came with accessories. Accessories that would become scattered about all over our house. 

It was the Batman costume that got to me.

I have SO many memories of Grant begging me to let him wear it whenever we would go anywhere. I mean, this boy once tried to wear it to church.

I can't watch Batman movies without laughing because I don't see a grown man. I see Grant running around saving Gotham City.

I remember thinking "I absolutely cannot wait until this Batman phase is over." Now that it's gone, I'd give anything to have it back.

I told Grant, as I was attempting to clean out his room, (I say "attempting" because he was coming right behind me taking everything out of the garbage that I placed IN the garbage) "I'm putting these toys in the attic in HOPES in a year or two we can pull them down for your brother." I was expecting him to beg me not to. I expected him to give me those sad eyes only he knows how to use on me. But he didn't. He didn't beg. He didn't even care. He said "Yeah. That's a good idea."

This broke my heart. I'm not ready for him to grow up. I'm not ready for this at all. I've always wanted him to become more independent so I wouldn't have to get up 1,000 times when I finally got a chance to sit down. Now it's here. Now he can fix his own cup of milk. He can even make a peanut jelly butter sandwich. 

I don't know where the time went or how he grew out of Batman so fast, but he did and it has really gotten to me.

It makes me think about how he used to say "lellow" instead of  "yellow" or "fumb" instead of "thumb."

I have loved that baby more than anyone else could in his almost 7 years of life, but I never stopped to think about how much I would miss the times when he was so little and couldn't pronounce his words right or the times he wore the batman costume shopping.

 Don't get me wrong, I have loved every minute of his little life (12,000 pictures on a flash drive to prove it), but I just didn't realize how fast it would be gone and how much I would really miss my Batman.

I don't want to take any of this for granted. I want to be thankful for each minute I have with him now. I don't want to look at all of my videos and pictures of him as a little, little boy and think about how much I want them back. I want to be thankful they happened and even more thankful I have this time with him now.

I am so unbelievably thankful that I was chosen to be this boy's mama. I'll never understand what I did to deserve him, but I am forever grateful that he is mine.

I suppose the point I am trying to make is that I am going to do my best not to think back to the past and think about how I want my little man to be little again, but I'll be thankful for now. For right now, he still needs me when he's sick to rock him and baby him. He still needs me to tuck him in "as snug as a bug" at night. I'll take that.