Lara Temme is a copywriter and lives with her son (7) and daughter (9) in Brabant. At home there is a lot of laughing, cuddling, skipping and singing. False, but the family itself is not bothered by this. As well as the always messy attic.
“It’s time. We have a teenager at home. Now I come from the time when that term was only reserved for children from the age of thirteen, but nowadays you already reach this milestone on your tenth birthday. The countdown had been going on for months, like every year; the tension was again omnipresent. How much she was looking forward to it. The wish list had been put together with great care, her birthday outfit had been ready for weeks and the sweets she had chosen patiently waited for a place on the cake. In short: we were ready.
Huge understatement
Naturally, puberty also begins around this age. We have already become extensively acquainted with this. My husband and I often look at each other at such moments with an amused and endeared look. How big she is growing up, and at the same time she is still very much our little girl. “Time passes so quickly,” people often say. But that cliché is wrong. ‘Fast’ is a huge understatement. I feel like it wasn’t that long ago that she used countless endearingly scrambled words and that Maya the Bee and The Sand Castle were among her favorite films – nowadays ‘really very childish, mom’.
Trip down memory lane
Every birthday is one trip down memory lane, but such an anniversary year especially. I found it exciting to start a family. Yes, those fears… Those damn thoughts, so irrational and yet so all-consuming. After much thought, we decided to go for it, and even though it took almost a whole decade for me to feel like myself again, parenthood is still the very best, most beautiful and most important thing in my life.
In 2014 we celebrated the first edition of King’s Day (which was on the 26e April took place because the 27e fell on a Sunday), not knowing at the time how special that holiday would be for us. During King’s Eve with our group of friends, friends, who knew how much I was looking forward to the end of my pregnancy, lovingly shouted under my maternity dress: “Yoohoo, come on!”. It worked. Less than 24 hours after the orange tompouces, on the day that Ajax became champions for the fourth time in a row, we became parents for the first time.
“Our daughter has taken her first steps towards adulthood, from now on she will only become more detached from us. I really hate that realization.”
So happy and proud
It was very tough at times, that’s no secret. Just like the fact that I have often (way too often) been convinced that I was falling short. Which turns out to be very unjustified when I look at my children now. Yes, they get the caution with which they approach life from me. But also their friendly, social character, their boundless enthusiasm and love for nature. When I see my children, with their endearing comments, sense of humor and unbreakable bond with each other, I am so happy and proud.
Wonderful state of ignorance
Our daughter has taken her first steps towards adulthood, from now on she will only become more detached from us. I really hate that realization. How wonderful it would be to go back in time, to the years when a double-digit age seemed infinitely far away. That mischievous toddler smile, rice waffle in her fist, the amazement for everything around her. But even though time passes too quickly, I look forward to watching her grow up.
Fortunately, at the moment we still get plenty of cuddles and we go crazy together all day long. It may be an illusion that this will remain the case in the coming years, but let me believe in it. I don’t dread puberty at all. And whether that is justified, or just the blissful state of ignorance… Ask me again in ten years.”
Read more from Lara:
Lara: ‘I give my children more peace of mind’
Lara: ‘Maybe I gave my kids the feeling that my phone was more important than them’
Lara is always at home for her children: ‘No after-school care, no lunch, no babysitter, no dragging’
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