Before I know it...

The other night, Kaitlyn had a sleep over at her Nana and Papa's house.  It was a last hooray to summer and a time for her to have a slumber party with her cousin.  It was the night before the night before the first day of summer.  After the slumber party, the girls came to our house for swimming.  They swam hard and they must have played hard the night before, because our little Kaitlyn, who never naps, sat in her little recliner in her playroom to watch some TV, and without so much as reclining the chair or letting 5 minutes pass from the time her cousin left, was fast asleep.  I figured it was a cat nap, but after an hour, I decided to move her to our bed.

I rarely pick Kaitlyn up anymore.  She's at nearly 51 lbs, and that's a lot.  It hurts my back to pick her up and she is almost 7...  I couldn't put her in her bed, she has a loft bunk bed, and I didn't want to risk carrying her on the ladder.  And she slept.  As she slept, I realized, soon she'll be too big for me to even try to pick her up.  One day I'm going to blink and she's going to be a teenager, instead of taking a nap when she's too exhausted, she's just going to be grumpy and slam the door to her bedroom.  She is just getting so big so fast.

That night, I let Samantha fall asleep in my arms before bed.  Yes, I know it isn't great for teaching her how to sleep on her own, but it's ok.  I held her tubby thighs and chipmunk cheeks in my arms and realized that it's going by all too fast.  One day, I'm going to blink and this little angel is going to be a 2nd grader.

Time goes by so fast, and life is so short.  Sometimes, these reminders come to us at times we really need to remember what's important in life and to stop more often and spend time cuddling and carrying instead of on things that don't really matter.