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About a month ago, I was driving my kids to school when my older son suddenly asked me, “Mommy, how do you feel about your little baby turning 10-years-old this year?” I was a little bit taken aback by the randomness of the question, so I gave some generic response about how he’s always going to be my little baby no matter how old he gets. It hadn’t really registered with me yet that he was entering that “double digits” era, so I hadn’t really thought to mourn that leaving behind those single digit years means he’d be embracing more of his autonomy and independence.
Edie Falco’s kids are a bit older than mine are. She has a 19-year-old son named Anderson and a 16-year-old daughter named Macy. Edie is the guest on this week’s episode of Christina Applegate and Jamie-Lynn Sigler’s podcast, MeSsy. During her appearance, they started talking about how quickly time really does fly once you become a parent, and Edie shared how much she misses when her kids were little.
“Nobody talks about when those little kids disappear – it’s like a death,” says Falco, 60, whose son, Anderson, is 19 and whose daughter, Macy, is 16.
Falco swaps parenting stories and more alongside her Sopranos star Jamie-Lynn Sigler, on the second episode of MeSsy, Sigler’s new podcast with Christina Applegate, PEOPLE has an exclusive preview of the podcast episode before it comes out March 26.
Sigler, 42, whose two boys Jack and Beau are 5 and 10, is still navigating the younger years, but she says on the podcast that she’s “holding on to all the little baby things” like the fact that her son Jack has just lost his first teeth and that his hand “still doesn’t have knuckles.”
Adds Applegate, whose daughter Sadie is 13, “To know we’re not going to get that back freaks me out.’”
Falco says she treasures memories of those early days. “Early parenting stuff is madness but it’s some of the most divine, precious hours of my life,” the Nurse Jackie star says on the podcast. “When they both fall asleep on you when you’re watching TV and it’s quiet and you realize, ‘Oh my God I didn’t know I could feel this love.’ And then they’re just gone forever and ever, and they’re just memories and are all over your iPhone!”
Applegate, who’s admitted that living with multiple sclerosis has changed how she can parent, jokes that she wants to keep her daughter as close as possible, as long as possible: “I told Sadie when she goes to college, wherever it is, I’ll be moving in with her. I highly encourage Los Angeles-based universities. I’m like, ‘Why would you live in a dorm when we have our nice house?’ I’m doing everything I can to make her stay here.”
I understand what Edie means. It is sad when you realize your kids have grown out of their previous stage and that era is over. I try not to let myself get into that headspace, though. I hadn’t thought about my kid turning 10 this year because that means we’re practically a year away from –ugh– middle school, which basically means he’s practically a high schooler and just about ready to leave for college, which means…you get the point, lol. You know the saying, “Getting old is a blessing?” Well, I try to look at my kids getting older and seeing them through new phases and stages of life as a blessing as well. I guess to use Edie’s own terminology, if the little kid stage ending is like a death, then seeing each new milestone as they grow into their own little people is like starting a new life.
Oh, and that conversation in which my older son asked me how I felt about him turning 10 this year? It finished with him saying this: “When I’m 10, that means I’m going to have to get my next rust [tetanus] shot. I don’t want to get a shot, but I know it’ll be best for my health, so I’ll do it without crying.” Being old enough to march into the pediatrician’s office while knowing about and being okay with having to get a shot? There are definitely some perks to the “little kid” phase disappearing.
Photos credit: Hector Vallenilla, PacificCoastNews.com / Avalon, Robin Platzer/Twin Images / Twin Images / Avalon and Getty