I arrive home after being at work for a double shift to find my only daughter cocooned in my bed covers next to her Dada... Grinning because she got to sleep there instead of me... I laugh... knowing it will only ever happen when I work the night shift, as she is just getting much too big to sleep with us. She grumbles as I push her over and crawl in too... As she says to me "I got to sleep in your bed last night" in the snottiest voice possible... does she know how lucky she is? After being up for 25+ hours I find my humor in lack of sleep... Remembering back when she was little enough to crawl in between us and we wouldn't know she was even there, until her feet were somehow in our faces or ribs...
I have reveled in pictures this last week... taking note in the everyday chaos of our lives. I have found that I am still/yet missing so much... Suddenly I blink and our oldest, Garrett at 13 1/2 went from 5'8" in Sept. 2010 to his now 6'1", our daughter, Erica is 22lbs heavier and 6 inches taller since last fall and suddenly has acne, is more moody and has more evidence of the onset of puberty at barely 9... seriously... 9! Bringing up the rear is our youngest boy Dylan, who at just weeks into 7 is catching up to his big brother and sister and learning to defend himself against the masses... PRIDE for our youngest child...
Again... my tired mind is going over this as I lay here wanting to go to sleep... knowing I have to wake up that little man who is our youngest and get him on the Summer School bus, before I can fall fast into the softness of my bed and get some much needed rest, before that same bus arrives back at the house to drop him off... Yet still... laying here next to my daughter I have to look down at her and notice that she is just a foot shorter than I myself am... and just when did that all happen? My eyes drift slowly closed... I fight the sleep... with my hand held solitaire game slowly falling from my fingers... only to snap awake and jump out of bed to wake that little man and scoot him out the door...
Forty minutes later I find myself nestled into the cocoon of the same bed covers I was so jealous of my daughter being curled in.. to find myself drifting easily off to sleep... Which brings me to my point this afternoon... As I awake after only a couple hours of lost sleep... knowing I will find the rest tonight... I myself am taking life much much much too seriously, and I am missing some of it! Life just isn't meant to be this serious... their isn't a shred of evidence that states life has to be so serious! It is much too short... we have all lost a loved one, a pet, a friend but most of all we have lost time...
This week I strive to take a breath... enjoy the scenery... remember that I can't get there any faster than they can even when they rush, and to smile!
