My kids have started back to school for the 2014-2015 school year. I'm not sure how it happened, or when it happened, but my kids are no longer "children", they are pre-teens. Wasn't it just yesterday I was on the floor with them reading "Pat the Bunny", "Goodnight Moon", or one of the many wonderful books by Sandra Boynton for hours at a time? Our parents told us to enjoy every minute with our babies because in the blink of an eye, they'd be in middle school, high school, and then college. In another blink, they'd be getting married and having babies of their own.
When my husband and I got married, my mother requested a special song be played at our ceremony. The song was from "Fiddler on the Roof" and is titled "Sunrise, Sunset". The lyrics express perfectly how I'm feeling.
"Is this the little girl I carried?
Is this the little boy at play?
I don't remember growing older
When did they?
When did she get to be a beauty?
When did he grow to be so tall?
Wasn't it yesterday
When they were small?
Sunrise, sunset
Sunrise, sunset
Swiftly flow the days
Seedlings turn overnight to sunflowers
Blossoming even as we gaze."
I still instinctively look at my shoulder before I leave my house to see if I have baby food or drool which needs to be wiped off. When I take both kids shopping for clothes, I have to remind myself to go to the teen/preteen area and not the children's department.
My daughter used to lock her tiny little arms around my thigh whenever we went anywhere because she was so shy and scared. Now she runs with carefree abandon with her friends and throws back a "See ya later, Mom!" along with a smile. When did her wings of independence begin to spread?
My son loved to hold my index finger. Even as a toddler he was so outgoing and energetic. There were many times when I thought he'd dislocate my finger in his excitement to reach whatever it was he had his sites aimed for. These days I get a wave of his hand and a "Later! Love ya!" as he hops out of the car in the school drop-off line.
As I think back, the time elapsed from when they were just born to now feels like a few short weeks. What happened which caused this quick jump in age? As much as I would like to believe it was time travel, or even a time warp, I know that isn't the culprit. I think what happened was exactly what our parents told us would happen. We blinked.
Written by Christie Bielss
12 years ago I gave birth to a beautiful bouncing baby boy. It was such a relief to have that ball full of energy out into the world where he wasn't kicking and punching me for a good 20 hours out of every day. Ironically, when he was born he was quite the snuggler. If you held him, he would sleep soundly for hours upon hours. If you laid him in his crib, playpen, bouncy chair, swing, or anywhere else, he was awake in 20 minutes or less.
In his first year of life, he went to the hospital more times than I can count. We were there so many times, the ER nurses knew our insurance information by heart. Between the middle of the night cases of croup, the asthma complications, ear infections, and the capper: RSV, I learned more than I ever needed to know about an infant's breathing. Most of the gray hairs on my head now came as a result of having to learn how to pacify a baby enough so he'd allow a nebulizer mask to be put on his face to receive his asthma medication so he could breathe.
I'm not sure how many hours of sleep I actually got in his first year of life, but I'm betting I have more fingers and toes than I did actual sleeping hours. Many long hours, both day and night, were spent rocking him in the rocking chair, as well as watching Barney's Super Singing Circus every 2 hours so he wouldn't notice the nebulizer in his face. Oh, how I had a love/hate relationship with that blasted dinosaur. In those days and hours of frustration and exhaustion, I can't even count the number of times I thought about how nice it would be when he was older and we both could get some sleep.
I wished those days away without even truly realizing it. Now he is older, and in less than 3 years he'll have his driver's permit. In 6 years he'll be graduating from high school and heading off to college. Instead of wishing for the years to pass so I can get some sleep, I really want time to freeze. I want to have lots of memories I can hold onto when our nest becomes empty and his room stays clean for months on end, or I look in the cupboard and realize I don't need to go to the grocery store 2-3 days a week to restock what he's devoured.
In just a few short years, the quiet I enjoy today while my kids are in school will become a deafening silence. Now where there is shouting, arguments with his sister, rough-housing with his friends, and Nerf gun battles that take place throughout the entire house, in 6 years time it will all be replaced by quiet........ lots and lots of quiet.
I will be hanging onto these next few years memories with an iron fist. I may even enjoy every time I have to ask him to make up his bed, pick his shoes up out of the middle of the living room floor, or take out the garbage. As he enters the teenage years, he may drive me batty with his excessive energy, teenage eye rolls, and attitude, but I'm going to put every single one of his mannerisms in my memory bank.
Just as my mother said would happen, my perspective has changed. When I hear a mother talk about how her infant sleeps soundly through the night and how wonderful it is to get things done around the house, I think "how sad". We have a lifetime of doing laundry, cleaning, and picking things up, but only a short while to enjoy our children while they are small.
What I saw 12 years ago as an exhausting, thankless job was actually a blessing filled with hours of snuggling and cuddling with that little bundle of snips and snails and puppy-dog tails. Yes, I still look forward with great anticipation to seeing the man he will become, but for now, I'm going to relish in the teenager he's about to be.
Written by Christie Bielss
