30 the new 20?

I recently turned 30 and found myself, one not usually weird-ed out by numbers, horrified.  About a week prior, I started really dwelling on those crows feet.  They run in my family and my dad always told me they were a badge of laughter but all of a sudden they just seemed like a badge of oldness...  Three kids in four years has definitely not been kind to this bod, tiger stripes and all.  Five years of only sleeping in two/three hour increments hasn't helped either.  Things hang where they shouldn't, ache where they shouldn't and jiggle where they shouldn't.  Feel the hyperventilating starting...

I started this journey into parenthood at 25.  A good age I thought.  I definitely didn't want to be a old mom.  I was going to be young and hip.  But I find myself five years later neither young nor hip.  The only thing hip about me is my extreme hip pain, fail.  I love my little wild things dearly but for the first time I really found myself daydreaming about being somewhere else, at a swim up bar perhaps, wine weekend with friends, a cruise...  I would be tone and svelte and rested.  Anywhere but here.  My friends were going to take me out for sushi and Latin dancing to celebrate the beginning of a new decade.  Something fun and new.  Except when I went shopping to find something fun and new to wear it really hit me.  I didn't even know where to shop.  I entered this pregnancy period still on the young end of 20 and I am exiting this time warp in the next decade.  Forever 21 is now a no go.  When I entered in there with a stroller I felt like the record stopped and everyone started whispering.  I really knew it was a lost cause when I had a strong urge to tell them to lower the volume of this God forsaken music and the girl trying to help me to pull her shorts down.  Being called mam didn't help either.

I went up and down that mall twice and by the end of it I was practically in tears.  I either felt too young for most stores but way too old for the others.  I wanted to dress age appropriately but I didn't even know what that meant anymore.  Nothing fit right, nothing felt right, nothing looked right.  And then my two year old looked up at me and said, "Momma, can we go?"  "Baby almost.  Mommy has to find something to wear for this weekend." And my sweet little innocent vessel of truth responded, "But Momma!  I like you just like that.  You are a queen." And time stopped.  I'm a queen.  A symbol of graceful maturity and wisdom.  Not old but seasoned.   Why as a society do we have so much pressure to stay the princess?  Yeah things might sit on her figure where God had originally intended but she lacks prestige and insight.  I hugged her for a ridiculously long time.  Which of course thoroughly annoyed her and time snapped back again.  But I feel blessed for this lesson.  My impressionable girls look to me as their queen.  How am I leading them?  To scrutinize and critique every inch of their body or to hold their head high thankful for the temple God has bestowed on them?

So, I am going to start a new trend.  Thirty is the new 20.  And so is 40 and 50 and 60... I think when I am 90 I am going to look in the mirror, unrecognizable, and still feel 20.  Actually, after some thought, I am glad I'm 30.  I've got a lot to show for it.  Three beautifully healthy girls, a supportive loving husband, possibly the world's most patient fantastic dog, a roof over my head and a body, although aching, still able to run 2.5 miles 5 days a week. 

And another perk? I got through my teen years without social media.  Cause wow, that would have been a mess.