I know moms everywhere are trying to slow down time. I feel like, for the most part, I can go with the flow of my kids growing up. I love the different stages their in and I am actually excited for all that’s to come in the teenage years. Someone can remind me of this in six to eight years, mkay?
But, sometimes, something creeps in and I have a mild panic attack in Target. I had read this image someone had posted on Facebook (stupid Facebook) and it said something along the lines of 2016 is only two months away but 2008 seems like it was only two years ago. 2008 was a big year for me, I had my first baby and two days later turned 22. This silly image of those words kept flashing in my head in Target, and with it, all those years.
WHERE DID THEY GO.
I started to physically walk slower down the aisles. If I just start taking really looooong, slooooow steps and draw out my words will I slow it all down? Can time stand still right here and now, please?
Can I freeze the moment of a seven year old boy who has the most tender heart. Who is still bashful and innocent and loves hard. A silly, stubborn and incredibly sweet almost six year old who goes to the beat of his own drum. Oh Lord, please help him never to lose that. A three 1/2, going-on-seventeen, year old girl, who is the girliest of girls but holds her own among all these brothers. She wants to go and do and see and create and is always ready for the next thing. She genuinely cares for and serves others with her whole heart. Don’t let that stop. I’ve got a two year old who could pass for a four year old. He’s so tall and picking up on everything his older siblings pass down. He changed my life when his birth mom placed him in my arms and he hasn’t stopped changing it ever since. He pats my arm at least 30 times and looks up at me with his big, beautiful eyes and says LOVE YOU MOM. He follows me everywhere I go and won’t let me put him down in any public place. I don’t even care. And then I’ve got this baby. This baby girl that has only been with us for just about three months but we can’t even imagine what life was like without her. I kiss her cheeks a thousand times a day and it’s still not enough. She laughs at me when I call her every delicious food name I can come up with. I tell the kids she’s a cinnamon bun fresh out the oven and that she’s made entirely of peaches of cream. She’s the happiest, most easy going baby because she has no choice. She smells like what Heaven will smell like, I’m sure of it.
I remember everything about Brody being a baby. I remember how hard it was to nurse him, I remember the long nights. I remember his first words, the month he finally took a step, and the month he finally got teeth. I remember him being the smiliest baby and everyone commenting on his long blonde hair. I remember it all. Back then I actually started to fill out a baby book. But I didn’t even have to, cause the first baby-ness is engraved in my mind.
These four more sweet babes came in the years to follow and I already forget. I’m barely three months into this thing with Lula and I already forget the sleepless nights. I can’t even remember if I washed my hair in the shower already or not. Nothing sits and lingers with me anymore like it used to. Life just is. The babies aren’t all that different, no, it’s all the same stuff but I’m so different. Where did the years ago and how I can hold on to everything the same way I did the first time around?
I can’t.
I remember, years ago, hearing people talk about aging and me being like why do people care so much? It’s just getting older. EN BEE DEE. And then I had five kids, in what appears to be a millisecond, and it started to happen to me.
In all my nostalgic fright that has overcome me these past few days, I looked back on this blog. I looked back and read these words that felt so real and true and raw on Saturday, February 27th 2010. So you can only imagine how they feel on November 3, 2015.
“You won’t remember how it started with us. The things I know about you that you don’t even know about yourselves. We won’t come back here.” – Kelly Corrigan
Time, stop.
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