Terms and labels are all so relative. I know we need them to discuss our thoughts and ideas, but on occasion I have watched some label or another that I had been using quite successfully completely disintegrate in its utility. For example, I think of myself as an older mother because I began my family when I was 37 years old. Then I read about women having babies in their fifties and beyond and I feel like a spring chicken! Neat trick, huh?

I think of myself as an older adoptive parent because I adopted my daughters when I was 39. Then I read about men and women in their fifties and beyond who adopt young children and suddenly the older adoptive parent boundary starts to feel a little elastic.

I had another label stretching experience earlier this week when my kiddos returned to school. I adopted my daughters as a sibling group when they were three and four years old. To my way of thinking and technically speaking they were classified as an older child adoption. I have had numerous conversations with parents about the obvious and subtle differences in adopting infants and adopting older children. For instance, having baby pictures is a biggie. When you adopt an infant you have a visual record in pictures or on film of your child's early life. When you adopt an older child you do not.

Then there are more subtle things like learning what size your older child wears. That one caught me by surprise. I was in the regular habit of grabbing a few things for my son while I was out shopping because I always knew what size he wore. I still remember the day I was stumped when I decided to grab some inexpensive sneakers for the girls shortly after they came home. I suddenly realized that I didn't have a clue as to what size they wore.

So, I have been walking around with this parent identity as a mother of three children, two of whom were adopted as older children. Then, I'm at the new school that my children started on Monday, which has a French Immersion curriculum and a Montessori curriculum. Both of the programs begin accepting students a early as ages three and four. The preschoolers did not begin on the same day as the older children, but a number of them and their parents were at the school on the first day taking care of odds and ends in terms of registration and classroom assignments.

They. Looked. So. Tiny!

I found myself staring at these little bitty things and wondering were the girls ever that little. I came home and went through some old photographs and realized that I had baby pictures of the girls after all. The little ones in those pictures are such babies compared to my big girls now. I can't explain the mental gymnastics that I must have been going through in my head all these years that somehow had me thinking that the girls were much bigger than they actually were when we adopted them. Maybe their introduction to our lives was such a big event that they took on a larger than reality appearance to me. I don't know.

I guess the same thing will happen when my kids reach high school and then college. I will look back at the pictures I have of them now and think how little they were. Does that ever stop?