Where Does Time Go?
Sleepless nights, never-ending laundry, learning to work with one hand tied behind your back (or using it hold a baby on your hip). Then they sleep through the night, learn to do their own laundry, and add two hands to the kitchen instead of handicap one.
After years of diapers, baths, doctors, dentists, noses, laundry, chores, summer camps, play groups, library runs, school programs, and a seemingly limitless list of tasks and responsibilities associated with motherhood and parenting, it's over. Well, maybe not over, but things are definitely changing.
Now, Patrick blows his own nose, does his own laundry, and drives himself to the dentist. One thing that hasn't changed? He still likes to have lobster for his birthday dinner. One of my earliest pictures of him helping to prepare lobster was when he was not quite six years old. I don't think this was a birthday dinner, but it was the beginning of a long tradition.
After years of diapers, baths, doctors, dentists, noses, laundry, chores, summer camps, play groups, library runs, school programs, and a seemingly limitless list of tasks and responsibilities associated with motherhood and parenting, it's over. Well, maybe not over, but things are definitely changing.
Now, Patrick blows his own nose, does his own laundry, and drives himself to the dentist. One thing that hasn't changed? He still likes to have lobster for his birthday dinner. One of my earliest pictures of him helping to prepare lobster was when he was not quite six years old. I don't think this was a birthday dinner, but it was the beginning of a long tradition.
Lobster dinner - 2006
Lobster Birthday Dinner - 2018
Eighteen! I remember, when he was really little, trying to imagine what it would be like to see this tiny little creature as a "grown up"...I couldn't picture it. I just couldn't imagine what my "little guy" would look like as a "big guy". Now I find myself remembering back to those days of play groups, cute little shoes, and playing hide-and-seek in the back yard. I remember watching him wander off into the forest and returning with a wagon full of leaves, pine cones, and all manner of nature's treasures. Now he doesn't walk away, he rides...a 1983 BMW motorcycle. And when he returns, he comes back with stories of his adventures. I'm no longer planning and organizing adventures that we get to do together. Now, I just have to sit on the sidelines and enjoy the stories and the pictures when he returns.
Happy 18th Birthday, Patrick.
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