My Twice Baked Potato

Have you ever watched your child when he didn’t know that your eyes were on him?

Have you noticed the way his mouth moves when he’s reading a book silently or he’s building Legos with intense focus?

Have you noticed the way he eats his food when he’s distracted by the TV or when he’s examining worms on a rainy day?

Have you noticed his sweet face when he’s sleeping or his wide eyes as he’s just waking up?

Have you noticed how his face doesn’t look like a toddler anymore but thinning out like a boy, a growing boy, a soon to be tween boy?

Lately, I’ve been paying close attention to these moments. Maybe it’s because I am home more with him or maybe it’s because I see him growing so quickly and I want to burn these pictures in my memories.

This parenting journey messes with my sense of time. Some days drag on and I swear it should be dinner when it’s only time for lunch.

The waiting of “I’m almost done” or “just a minute” seems excruciating. So does the time it takes to convince him to try that harder math.

Other days flow quickly together and before I know it, another Christmas is here. Another birthday. Another year.

No one could have told me how this time thing works. Some tried, but I had to experience it for myself.

This time thing means that I too age, while I witness him outgrowing yet another pair of shoes. I feel older on those harder days for sure.

The time is faster with easy days but that doesn’t mean that I want to trade these for the overwhelmed feelings that went with the harder moments.

The third grade days were slow, real slow. These were the days that we hoped would race by.  The weekends in between those days would fly by and then we were back to the slow again.

That’s when we thought about this time thing. We realized that more time should be happy, laughter & learning. Only a fraction of time should be worry and stress.

We realized that with raising a singleton, we only have one time to get this thing right. This time, we chose more family time, more comfort, more home.

This time thing with parenting reminds me that although you remain a parent even when he spreads his wings, I have a short time to plant those roots steady. I have a short time when he’ll hold hands and read stories and lay in bed and talk about anything and everything.

I know that some days, some hours, seem long but I try to focus on the good of it all-knowing that this time will be gone in a blink of an eye.