Today is the kind of day where if the kids were still little and we still lived in our little old house, I’d walk them down to the park by the river. We’d take the long way home and stop at our favorite coffee shop – fruit smoothies for them, iced coffee for me. We’d come home for naps. I’d spread out big scrappy towels on the patio and put out paints and paper and let them make a mess of themselves.
Those days were hard. Long. Touched out. Overstimulated. Endlessly chasing after someone and trying to keep them both alive. And yet, oh, how I miss them. Not for too long, of course, because soon it will be summer and they will be done with school. On nice days we’ll go to the park or to the pool and stop at our favorite places for food. When we get home I will spread out my scrappy tablecloth for crafting and paints on the deck and let them make a mess of themselves. I will be touched out and overstimulated and ready for them to go back to school by September. But I only have so many years (and not enough of them) of this left. I want to remember how much I miss those days and how much I’ll miss these ones.
I love these pictures. I had just gotten my “big” camera from a friend who had upgraded. I had no idea what I was doing, but I was trying to learn. Violet *loved* that dress. She wore it until it had holes in it. Abram half in pajamas because he *always* wanted to wear pajamas. (The other mother’s at his preschool probably thought I was the laziest woman alive because he was always in pjs.)
Oh, your kids were/are so sweet, Kate … and my goodness, that dress!!! (I was working the library yesterday and a grade 2 girl had a skirt exactly like Violet’s dress; she was twirling around and making it flare out, and I thought, “EVERY little girl should have a skirt like that, so they can spin around and have the joy of making it fly around them 🙂 .)
Years ago, our paediatrician said (of children growing up): the days are long but the weeks and months fly by. It IS really hard, raising little ones, so hard that when you’re immersed in it, it can be almost impossible to see the sweetness. But those memories seem to rise to the top (or at least, they did for me), and I feel like it was THAT — picturing them little — that got me through all the strife we went through with our older two during a stretch of their teenage years. It DOES all seem to go by in the blink of an eye. I can’t quite believe I have a 20-year-old daughter and an 18-year-old son, and that our BABY is 12 …
Thank you so much, Marian. I think so too *and* it’s like the read my mind. On our drive home from school today, they asked if we could go to the park, so we spent an hour down there and it was so fun to watch them swing and play. I have a *little* while longer yet.
And yes, every little girl should have a dress/skirt that twirls. When Violet was that age she wore dresses/skirts that twirled all the time. Now that she’s grown up she wears pants and I get that…but I do miss my little girl who was always twirling. 🙂
Talk about “missing it”–I missed this post when you first published it. I know we’ve talked about this before, but–yes. I miss it, too, and my babies are 19 now. I couldn’t do it now, I don’t think. But oh, I loved it then, and I miss the people they were then. No one tells you that your children are constantly evolving beings and that you will miss the earlier versions of them when they are gone.
Hoping you all have a wonderful summer together–starting to get really antsy for that time myself.