They won't be little forever!

Okay, starting today, I resolve to be better about adding to this blog more regularly! Otherwise, I'm missing too many of the everyday, silly parts of parenting. Now that everyone is done throwing up (Nellie and DJ joined in pretty much the moment I ended that last post) and I'm into a routine for the semester, I have no excuse.

Plus, the fact that the kids won't be little forever has been nudging at my mind. Much of the time, I think about that fact with a little bit of panic--I want to hold onto every moment and appreciate every day that they're small. Lately, though, my mental response is something along the lines of thank goodness. At least once a day it dawns on me quite suddenly that soon, very soon, the girls will get their own clothes out of their dresser and just PUT THEM ON. They will POUR THEIR OWN MILK. They will BUCKLE THEIR OWN SEATBELTS. Someday, I will cook meals without a pre-walking baby clinging to my legs (which becomes quite tricky when I'm wearing sweatpants. Kevin has found me standing at the stove with my pants around my knees and a crying baby sitting next to me on more than one occasion. Not sexy.) Someday, I won't spend ten minutes of every shopping trip standing in the baby section wondering if we need diapers, nighttime diapers, wipes, etc. Kevin and I will sleep in our bed, alone, every night. There won't be 1,436,272 Cheerios in the van, or eight sippy cups filled with chunky old milk hiding around the house at any given moment. It's kind of like remembering in the dead of winter that spring really will come someday, and it will be warm again.

The point is, life won't always be this way. It won't always be so difficult in the way it currently is, when the kids seem to be dependent on us for everything. We've been in the "little years" now for 5 and a half years, and it's hard to remember what life was like before that or imagine what it will be like when we don't have preschoolers any more. It starts to feel as if the kids really will be little forever.

But I know they won't be. In fact, I've started to imagine myself as the mom of school-aged kids, and the mom of teenagers, and it seems much less strange than it used to. It's coming, and fast. The girls are quite suddenly starting to treat me differently, as if they just noticed that I'm a real person. They ask me questions about myself, and wonder what I was like when I was a kid, or before I got married, or before they were born. The other day, Nellie woke up, looked at me, and said, "I'm glad that Daddy asked you to marry him and you said yes. I'm glad you married Daddy because I love your face." I can't get over how funny it was, or how much I agree with her and how much I love her face. She also wrote me a note that says, "I love mommy. She is so pretty. I love her." I want to eat it up and let it warm my heart and soothe my spirit when, inevitably, she runs upstairs someday yelling, "I hate you!" and slamming the door in my face.

I digress. They're growing up, and as buried as we are in long days and everyday life with kids aged 5, 3, and 1, I need to unbury myself long enough to start capturing this stuff before it's gone.