The Time of Our Life

My littlest guy needs clothes.
He's growing like a bad weed.
The heel of his socks hits midfoot, so therefore they tend to come off half way through the day.

I don't like shopping at the best of times, so while I was at Costco the other day, I decided to zip into the clothing tables to look for some jammies for him.

Then I started crying.
The table that holds sleepers for 3m-24m is no longer a table I will ever shop at for my kids again.
Ever.

Not sobbing, just a few tears.
Enough that my middle said, "Why you cryin', mama?"
*Exhale
Exhale to stop from falling into an ugly cry because there are no more babies at your house and your daughter is the sweetest damn thing on the planet right now.

Post-shopping, I decided to take my littles to an indoor playground called Café O Play.
Super fun for the under 5 crowd, and jam friggin' packed with pregnant ladies.

I don't really hover when my kids are at an indoor playground, because, well, I brought them there to run rampant so I could read my book.
I know what their cries sound like and I go make sure they aren't flushing toys down the toilet or hitting some else's kid periodically, but for the most part I'm what some might call, a "free-range" parent.
(Please don't call Social Services.  They aren't actually feral children, and they always wear pants when we leave the house.)

While I was sitting back watching some of the chaos playing, I realized that many of the conversations around me were between pregnant Mom's.
No lie, I bet 50% of the women there were knocked up!

And when you're pregnant, your world revolves around your pregnancy.  (Guilty!)
It's kind of a big deal.

Now that I'm a veteran Mom, though my experience can be applied only to my own littles, I realize that the act of being pregnant is so, so brief.

It feels like a huge life event, and at the time it is, but you grow your babies for not even a year.  Then, they're born in another seemingly huge life event, again, only fleeting, for them to begin growing at an alarming rate.

So alarming, that six years later, your oldest is reading chapter books and two more have joined the herd.

They say that the nights are long but the years are short.
Or something like that.

The nights are long.
They're STILL long, six years later, but I get it now.
They grow up so fast.
So.  Fast.

My husband and I disagree sometimes.
(Shocking, I know!)
We tend to chock it up to little sleep and the fact that we're just trying to get through these trying years when the kids are so needy and dependent and we're not sleeping.

But this is it.
This is the time we will look back on as the best years of our lives, and I don't want to remember that we clung to our helmets, headed into the battle day, and hoped for the best.

I want to remember the memories we're making, and not the fact that creating the memories was stressful.
I don't want to say to my husband, "Phew!  Glad we survived that!"
I hope that one day, when all the kids have left home, we can high five each other, because, we nailed it.

And also, by then, we'll be alone again.
And I don't want to wish for the kids to move out and for us to be alone, but it will be nice to have the guy all to myself again!