the brilliant, albeit exhausting, small beings that live in my house

I've said it before and I'll say it again, these children are growing too fast.  Sometimes it feels like hours are so unbearably long that I'll never make it with a shred of sanity until bedtime.  And by 'sometimes it feels like' I mean everyday around 5pm it feels like that.

And then all of sudden, out of the blue it's nearly another Thanksgiving and my three year old is correcting me constantly "I'm three AND A HALF, Mum!" and the baby is 21 months and I'm silently wiping tears away as I pack up more baby clothes that she doesn't fit in.

Howwwwww?!

These moments of panic are usually triggered by the children using a new phrase suddenly, like Gemma speaking in full on understandable sentences this week - "Hold you, Mumma!"  and "What are you doing Bully?"  It's like it was bumbled words before and now we all understand what she's saying.  insanity.

And me trying to trick a sick Greyson into thinking The Croods movie was on tv instead of officially telling him we will own it for Christmas, and doesn't he notice me for one second turning off the DVD player as slyly as I possibly could when it ended.  Two minutes later he walks into the kitchen holding the disc announcing, "Mum, this is why The Croods was on!"  I can't slide anything past this kid anymore!?

And then they also got their pictures taken this week which always brings a massive wave of heartache when I switch out their old photo frames to new ones.  I stand over the long line of pictures comparing each minuscule facial feature change between the different photographs.  And, ouch, it's terribly painful to see the incremental growth you watch every day stark and all lined up in a row like that.

 I'm, by nature, a very nostalgic person and can nearly start feeling wistful about things before they've even completely passed yet.  With Thanksgiving around the corner, I am already feeling a little sad that it will be over in a week and the fast-paced, tradition-filled weeks of Christmas will be upon us - before also very quickly passing.

Because of this reflective bit in my heart, in the present I contemplate my future nostalgia as a reminder to slow down and try to remember that someday these will be 'the good 'ole days.'  Like how long will it be before I miss waking up to a child's size 9 foot in my throat?  How long will it be before I think back with a longing heart to the days when our daily family dinner consisted of the kids getting approximately three full bites in their mouths while the rest of the food splattered on the table, chairs, curtains, and floor?

Along with the passing of these difficult times too, I know also comes the passing of Gemmi's scrunched up nose smile when she thinks I'm in on her little joke.  And the passing of finding 34 dinosaurs and plastic cars underneath our living room ottoman daily.  These are certainly some hard times, but undeniably some wonderful ones too.

Someone recently told me, "Little kids; little problems.  Bigger kids; bigger problems."  It was on a day that I needed a reminder that even though I can't speak on the phone without a little hand grabbing it away from me ("I talk!") and our house only ever looks clean within the ten minutes of actually cleaning - we still do only have little problems.  Spilled bowls of chips crunched into a million pieces, bumps and bruises that are cured with ice and bandaids, someone having trouble with sharing...these are problems that someday I will look back on and wish for when I'm contending with hearts broken into a million pieces, and broken bones, and reminding teenagers to be wise with what and with whom they share.

In any case, tis the season for thanksgiving and I am so grateful that I have these two brilliantly amazing, however exhausting, little beings that call me Mum.  Sometimes it is just unfathomable to me that these little humans belong to me and I to them.

So don't mind me over here, simultaneously trying to speed up and slow down time, because the baby is waking up from her nap and Grey just dumped half a cup of milk on the carpet - xxxoxo