There suddenly will come a day in your life when you realize that you are becoming your mother...or father...but for me, I'm slowly becoming Mom. It's not a bad thing, really, except that I just have to steel myself against the fact that I'm getting super goofy and that everyone is going to make fun of me and write about my antics on their blogs. It was a simple thing I was doing today when I came to this startling conclusion.

I was flying a kite.

This kite flying day has been planned for almost a week. I went with my friend Shanon and her daughter Elena, who is 2 and probably the smartest kid I've ever seen. Even more so than Derek was...sorry, man. That's the truth as I see it! Anyhoo...we went walking in Fountain Creek Park last week and saw a guy flying a really cool dragon kite. Elena was transfixed so Shanon got the idea to dig out the kites she had bought and we would fly them today.

She had two; one was a single string set-up with a teddy bear wearing a parachute. She assembled it quickly and handed it off to me to fly while she set up the other kite. I was doing pretty good with ol' Teddy until the wind suddenly died. Teddy came crashing down to earth at a tremendous rate of speed. BOOM! Luckily, Teddy was okay. I picked him up and waited for the breeze to return, all the while Elena saying, "Go, Teddy...let's go kite!" Finally he was airborne once again.

This was when I realized that I wasn't very good at flying a kite. I was Charlie Brown. I was running all over the park with Teddy flapping pathetically behind me. Elena was entertained and that's what was important but I still felt like I should be doing better.

The wind picked up, though, and I started to get the hang of it. Then he plummeted again. This time, Teddy wasn't so lucky. He broke. Now when I tried to fly him, he just flopped like a defective butterfly. I felt soooo bad...I had broken Elena's kite!

Shanon assured me it was okay - she had only paid 35 cents for it. By this time she had the other kite ready to go but this one was a dual handled deal. Derek had warned me against just these type of kites the day before so I was wary when Shanon handed me a spool of twine while she kept the other. We didn't fly it for very long before Elena had to go to the restroom so I was in charge of flying the kite solo until they returned. Was she crazy? I had just murdered the other kite and that was the EASY one to handle!

Within seconds of their departure, I had both strings so tangled that the kite was flying lopsided. Then while trying to fix it, I constantly dropped one spool, letting it trail behind me, unraveling more string and making the knotting worse. Shanon had to untangle it when she returned. Then she let me fly solo again. She has a lot of faith in me...

I finally got it up in the air and was keeping it tangle-free. I was doing it! I was flying a kite! Maybe I wasn't Charlie Brown after all! See, I can fly a - - - and then I ran into a tree. I had been walking backwards, not thinking that there were trees and a lake filled with geese and ducks directly behind me. I guess it was lucky the tree stopped me from falling into the lake, which I'm sure I would have done eventually.

I knew right then that I was my mother. That was something she would do...be so proud of herself for her accomplishment and then have something clumsy happen that everyone around her will tease her about unmercifully. I'm okay with it. Really.

Except next week we're trying the kite-flying again. And this time, Shanon's bringing her Snoopy kite. If that's not an omen of doom for any poor kite, I don't know what is!

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