Happy Birthday to you!

Today, one of the greatest things to ever happen to me turns 12 years old.  I honestly can't believe it.  When you bring home a squalling little bundle of joy from the hospital, everyone tells you to enjoy it, it goes so quickly.  That's very hard to believe when you're bogged down in the minutiae of every day existence.  All of the pediatrician appointments, music classes, weekend hikes, summer camping trips, boy scout meetings, and school Christmas concerts individually seem to crawl by.  But then, all of a sudden, you look back, and *poof*!  His childhood has flown by! 

He started midde school this year.  Next year he'll be a teenager.  By the next presidential election he's going to be old enough to have his temporary driving permit.  In 2019, six short years from now (and only half the time that's gone by already so quickly) he'll be walking across a stage, flipping a tassel on his mortarboard, and grinning out onto the crowd with those beautiful dimples, as he moves on to a totally different stage of his life.  A stage that involves parents as advisors and fundraisers, but not providers of the day-to-day supervision and care that we wrap him in, sometimes too tightly, right now.

People often say to us "I don't know how you do it."  Honestly, most days, I don't either.  But here's my secret:  I love it.  I sit at soccer practice and watch him run, with those long, loping strides across the field, and my chest tightens with raw pride.  I watch him laugh and be goofy with his friends at boy scouts and can't help but smile.  I see him cuddle under a blanket in the back seat of the car with his brother on yet along long ride to the middle of nowhere to play soccer in the rain and there's nowhere I'd rather be.

My kids have allowed me the privilege of watching two miracles unfold.  You simply can't put a price on that.

This makes me laugh.