These days I find myself thinking of how quickly my boys are growing.
As a child, I remember feeling like everything took forever - the school years took too long, yet the summers seemed endless. Waiting for a birthday seemed equal to waiting on the apocalypse. I would suppose it to be old age (at 10, isn't that what your 30's are?), but what's really making the time speed by is motherhood.
You know the old addage, "The days are long, but the years are short?" I've found few things to be more true.
While it's exciting to watch as Bates learns to run, jump, and climb, I can't help feeling an ache as I realize that my last (?) baby has become a toddler.
It is Bent, though, that gives me that hollow feeling in the the pit of my stomach.
Bent, my first baby.
The most wonderful child in the entire world (as most first-born's tend to be called).
The sweet, witty, little empath of a boy with the big brown eyes is beginning to gain real, true independence.
He is becoming too cool for bedtime stories (to be quite honest, I know he still likes them, but he has to put on that they are boring, lest he be considered a baby), but the day is coming when he genuinely won't want to snuggle up with his mama and read books, and I'm not ready for it.
He wants to play in his room alone and close the door, so as not to be disturbed by his baby brother, and some days he just "doesn't feel like" going outside with all of us.
This time of transition is exciting, though, as I watch him push himself to new limits, physically and mentally. I no longer have to be the one to offer him a new challenge - he does it on his own - finding new ways to to test himself constantly.
He is finding himself - trying on new hats. Though some hats tend to sting a little (the attitude hat, the go-against-the-grain hat, the your-suggestions-are-lame hat), he must try them all on in order to find out who he really is.
But I know who he really is.
I see his heart, and it is so very, very good.
