Kathryn can lift a pitcher of iced tea all by herself. She brushes her own teeth, she washes her own hair, and she cuts her own pancakes. My life has certainly improved.

I can remember brushing Kathryn's teeth. I'd sit on the toilet seat with Kathryn standing in front of me. I'd brush her little white baby teeth, the front teeth and the back teeth. Then, she'd open her mouth, and I'd brush the top of the molars and inside the teeth. Twice a day we did this.

Then she got a little older, and there I was, still on the toilet seat, but just watching this time as Kathryn brushed her own teeth. There were times I wanted to grab the toothbrush and finish the task. She was so slow! But that wasn't going to help her learn how to do it herself. Then, eventually, she got better. She reached every tooth, and she didn't speed through brushing her teeth as if she had a tower of blocks to mow down - right now. We stopped needing to oversee the teeth brushing extravaganza.

We saw this same phenomenon in other areas. We no longer cut pancakes for Kathryn, and most of the time we can convince Anastasia that cutting her own pancakes is a really great experience. We're almost liberated from hair care for Anastasia, my extremely curly-haired daughter. She washes her hair and conditions at least twice (you've never seen anything emulate straw so much as curly hair in winter). I still have to use protein spray and comb out her hair afterwards, but, hey, she brings me the protein spray and the comb. While I'm still involved in hair care, at eight, she's responsible enough to make sure we complete each step.

It's an amazing sense of freedom to just send your children upstairs to take a bath or shower. My husband and I do whatever we want (okay, sometimes we're doing bills), anything that doesn't involve washing our children's bodies or hair. We don't have to get involved. The girls go upstairs dirty, and they come down clean. All that's left for us to do is to follow them upstairs to bed, tuck them in, and kiss them goodnight.

It's not as if we don't want to take care our children. We do. As they get older, our daughters need less and less of our low-level skills (brushing teeth, washing hair, cutting pancakes), and they need more of our high-level, emotional skills. We're helping Kathryn with the stress of increased homework and need for organization in fifth grade. We're getting ready for middle school and all THAT entails. We're making sure that we support Anastasia in her manic quest to be the ultimate gymnast. We share things with them that we never could when we still at that sitting-on-the-toilet-seat-brushing-their-teeth stage.

It's just nice not to have to attend to every detail. We've gone from all of our attention and energies focused completely on the children during their waking hours to being able to channel some of that attention and energy to ourselves. No longer do we have to wait until the kids go to bed to start on our to do list or even, heaven forbid, have a chance to converse with each other.

Yeah, our quality of life has certainly improved.

Kisses for bedtime we'll keep forever, though.