I have sciatic nerve pain radiating down my leg and I am so tired I could cry and the cereal I just ate to help my vitamin go down may or may not come back up, but I HAVE to take even just five minutes to document this night.
Tonight started the baseball season for us. Landon hasn't played since Kindergarten and this is Noah's first year. They both had their first practice at different fields and an hour apart...and Jonathan came home with a migraine. So that meant dinner was done by 5:15 and the next 4 hours were spent driving back and forth to the fields and home, dropping kids at intervals. It was great fun. But here is the part that I have to get down into writing...in case I forget, and how easy it is to forget.
Noah's t-ball practice is at the same field that Landon played at when he was in Kindergarten. It was like deja vu going back. Watching Noah play in the dirt and miss the fielders, watching the little boys swing mercilessly at the t, missing almost every time. But the real kicker was when I took Everett to the play ground at the field. You see, three years ago, Landon was in Kindergarten and Noah was not quite 3 years old and playing on that same playground. And Everett was a gleam in my eye, albeit soon to be growing in my belly. As I watched Everett climb the dragon shaped stairs and sit at the top of the slide I kept having flashbacks to Noah doing the same thing. As I watched Noah running and playing on the field...I kept flashing back to my white blond haired 6 year old Landon doing the same thing. And it hit me. Just how fast the time has gone. How much growing up these boys have done. How they have switched places in the blink of an eye.
And then I went to Landon's third grade team practice...the one with the fast paced pitching machine. And I watched as the boys took athletic stances and nice strides into the ball when batting. How tall and old my boy looked out there on the field. And I knew in an instant, that I will blink and it will be my red haired, freckle faced Noey out there on the 3rd grade field. It happens so fast.
As I walked back to my car I couldn't help but breathe in the air and flash back to my days on the field. And how they felt like yesterday. How the sound of the bat against the ball made me automatically want to reach for the ball. It went so fast. Its been 14 years since I was a senior in high school.
And that is when I decided I had to write this down. Because SO often I want to rush my children out of a "difficult" stage. I yearn for more freedom and independence. When the days wear long and the kids are sick, or Everett won't eat, or Noah gets over tired...I see myself just wishing the day to end. But tonight I was reminded of how fast all of these days turn into weeks, and literally in what feels like the blink of an eye...years. How kids change places and grow up while we watch unaware because we are so stuck in the day to day. I don't want to forget. I don't want to wish them grown. The white blond haired Kindergartner turned into my tall, loving, wonderful almost 10 year old overnight. And the red haired, pudgy almost three year old...he turned into my tall, slender mischievous joy boy who can read and do math problems at the speed of light. And that gleam in my eye...he talks and climbs stairs and goes down the slide all by himself straight into my arms and laughs all the way. So much before them. So much behind them. I was reminded tonight...just how fast it goes. And I needed that reminder because the day to day can be wearing. But its the day to day that makes up the living...our life...our memories...and they change in the blink of an eye.
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