It’s strange when you “wake up” one day and realize that your kids aren’t little any longer! My oldest child is just a few weeks away from being legally old enough to get his learners permit to drive. It seems so strange to think back now and remember him as a baby that I held in my arms, or the little toddler who proudly proclaimed “I eat Pop Tart cereal” in his first sentence.
Now his spare time is filled with phone calls from his friends, MySpace messages and video games. And the things that he and his friends talk about and do crack me up! Last night my son was laughing so hard he had tears in his eyes. When I asked him what was so funny he showed me a message on his MySpace from one of his friends that said “The treadmill stole my cookie, should I run after it?”.
And it’s so strange to think of my daughter, who is just a few weeks away from “officially” being a teenager, as the little 2 year old girl who, curled her tiny little toes into the molding on the car door and used that to boost herself up enough to flip into an open car window. Now her days are filled with boys, music and sports! But one of her favorite things to do in her spare time is play with the dogs and she always seems to get the dogs doing something when she’s playing with them that make all of us crack up laughing!
Yes, there are days when I wish I could turn back time with my children and have them still need me for everything, and there are days that I dread thinking about what life has in store for them! But I know that they are at a stage in their lives where I need to give them enough space so that they can spread their wings and learn things for themselves. The days of mom being able to do everything for them have passed and I can only hope that I’ve taught them well enough so that when they spread their wings and fly, they soar like eagles!
