Parenting can go from peaceful sailing to rough-as-heck rapids seemingly overnight and with nearly no warning at all. At some point, our days go from long walks in the park with swings and slides to absolute craziness with school, sports, jobs, internships, and busy social lives to boot.
As a mom, I sometimes look back longingly and remember the lazy days of summer sprinklers and garden hoses. I see younger moms with smaller kids and to be honest, I envy the slower pace of their life. The ability to actually ask, “what do we want to do today?” The swimming-pool-peanut-butter-and-jellyness of it all.
With children as young as six months and as old as 21…and nearly every year in between…I still get some slow and lazy times with my wee ones, but it is now interspersed with big kids and their many places to be, people to see, and money that has to be made for college. I’m now at nine weeks and counting before two of my oldest leave for school and every precious moment I have with them I guard like a jealous girlfriend and try not to let them see my heartbreak and still express my simultaneous overwhelming excitement.
It’s been more than a bit challenging under this roof recently, but I just want to take a moment and let all of you with younger children hear me say something you have no doubt heard more than a million times but maybe you’ll actually LISTEN to me…
Enjoy every single moment.
Take the time to give that extra good night hug.
Smell their freshly shampooed hair one more time.
Tuck them in tightly.
Listen to them in the car ride babbling on about the mundane and the silly.
Take the walk.
See the movie.
Watch the sunset.
All of these pictures where taken the weekend we took the girls for a visit at school. This last picture was in a garden dedicated to the Vietnam Veterans and their children.
Savor the moments.
Because I swear to you…I SWEAR IT IS TRUE…
The days in parenting are long but the years are frickin’ short as heck and before you know it they are grown. And my new normal which now includes crazy business like I have never known is about to be upended again in just a few short weeks when Ryli and Bliss go to school. My new normal will be wonderful in so many ways and I am beyond grateful for every stress that involves all of the above because it is all centered around incredible opportunities…but sometimes…just sometimes…I long for my old normal. But those little girls from way back then are now grown and man…
I just sometimes wish I could go back and live each moment all over again.
Enjoy them, mamas. Enjoy.
Rachel Walls Godin says
I love this. I needed this reminder, too.
Believe With Me says
Thank you Rachel. Back when they were little, I never understood how quickly it goes. Man…just too fast.
Lydia Crowley Yates says
SO true!
Lyette Reback says
I know! Nine years goes by in a blink!
Lyette Reback says
You and I are in the same boat then! xoxo
Dawn McCaulley Hutchins says
As a mom to my own nine babies (aged 22- 4), grandma to one, and with my oldest who just moved away with said grandbaby to Oklahoma to become worship pastors for LifeChurch, I totally get this post. I remember my oldest daughters playing in the hose. Playing dress up. Just playing. And I think back on how much we’ve invested in our babies. Never putting them in school for even one day. Never being away from them for long at all… Now with one married and one soon-to-be married, I have to run and hide my tears in the bathroom! At the end of the day, it takes my husband to remind me that we’ve done our job. We’ve planted the seed and now all of our babies live to serve Christ. And that just brings me back to why we had them in the first place. To give them back to Him. Thanks, Lyette, for this amazing post. Much love from a fellow big family mama.