The Days are Long...

It's often said that with young children, the days are long but the years are short.  So true.

Also, though, I think it applies to how much they change and grow.  Every day they seem about the same.  Day becomes routine becomes life as we know it.  But then I look around and these children I'm raising - they're not the ones I think of in my mind's eye.  They're so much more mature in beauty and in action than the image I keep of them in my mind.

Every day is about the same: get Avery to school.  Prep the other two for the day's activities.  Play My Little Pony or Loving Family.  Wonder if the construction on the house will ever be done.  Pick up toys, laundry, dishes.  Get Avery from school.  Watch the kids play outside with the neighborhood kids.  Run several miles.  Dinner, bath, books, bed.  Enjoy every last fleeting moment that the children are sleeping and the hubs and I are home together.  Wake up again to Kate cuddles, yogurt and granola breakfasts, and lunches to pack.  It's good.  It's routine.

But I am pulled from my day-to-day fog when I hear Reese talking.  She says "bah" (ball) and "broom broom" and "eeow" (meow) and "wack wack" (quack quack) and "yish" (fish) and "yoush" (juice) and "apple" (referring to both apples and bananas) and "milk" and "more" and some weird guttural noise that means either water or drink, we can't figure out which.  And that's all brand new.  She's no baby.  She's a toddler, growing so fast that while we're going about our routines, she's rearranging them.

And Kate.  I looked at her today and wondered where that kid came from.  She was just out of the toddler stage last time I made a mental note.  But now, she's so grown.  And so kind.  The other day, Reese was trying to steal the big sisters' lovies.  We were redirecting her to her lovies.  Kate piped up: "She can have whatever of mine she wants.  She can have Ooh Ooh or Gunky."  We had to tell Kate three separate times that she could not give her favorite lovies away just to make someone else happy.  "But I want her to have them if she wants them..."  Precious girl who loves so freely.

And Avery is a school kid.  There's no mistaking it: she spends more awake time in a day with her teacher and school friends than she does in our home.  After school one day she was chewing gum.  "Mom, there's a new thing.  I can get a piece of gum if I have a good day at school.  So.... what can you infer about my day?"  And she has carried the brunt of helping out during the house-construction-disorganization over the last three months, and it's so easy to take for granted that she's a big kid and she can handle it.  Mom gets occasional reminders that she's still just a first grader, and still just six years old.  And for how mature and smart that girl is, I'm given a pensive reminder of how the days are slow while she's young.

And even though the years are speeding by, I will take the slow days and the routine.  It's ours and they're mine.  I'm so, so grateful.

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