The countdown begins

This time next week we will be getting ready to leave for the airport in Charlotte for our big trip. So exciting! Right now, I am getting ready to go to Jack's easter party at his preschool. We register him for kindergarten at PGS this Friday. It is hard to believe he will be going to big kid school in the Fall and I will have no children at home with me. For eight years I have had some little person tagging along at the grocery store, watching Dora at lunchtime, taking naps, reading stories, pitching fits, needing to be wiped, hugging...I could very easily cry. Yet how often have I longed for the day! I think of grocery store trips with one child in a front carrier, two in those monstrous carts with kiddie seats that I always managed to slam into some fruit display, just hoping that the baby would make it to the frozen food section without screaming his little head off or pooping. I remember little old ladies always stopping me and complimenting my beautiful children (and they are beautiful) and then telling me, "Enjoy this time, it goes by so fast!" And in my head I'm thinking, "You enjoy it, Lady, when someone has to go to the potty so we all have to trundle back to the meat section, use the bathroom, get wiped, everyone's hands washed, 'Don't put your mouth on that!', then load back up in the cart, get down two more aisles, someone else realizes they have to go to the potty, back to the bathroom we go, Oops! False Alarm" - the old ladies seemed to have forgotten about those days. So why does it make me sad to see Jack go off to school? Part of it is wanting that time back so I could do it better - enjoy it as the old ladies remind me to, laugh at the funny things my kids say, marvel at the world through a three year old's eyes - but I am who I am, so I can't say another go at it would be much different for me. But the older I get, the more I realize it all does go by so fast, and I pray that I would not take for granted the days and the people God's given me but love them with all I've got, imperfect as I am. So with that in mind, I'm off to an easter egg hunt with Jack and thirteen of his best buddies. :)