It's Not About the Trees

I have such a love/hate relationship with this time of year. I absolutely adore the "dog days of summer" and all the wonderful-ness that goes along with it...fresh produce, warm days with just a hint of fall that's right around the corner (hip hip hooray!!). The thing that's tough for me, though? School starting. At least this year it is....

Why you ask?

Well, because I'm just a big ole hot mess of emotions, and honestly it's hard for me to see pictures of all the beautiful children of my friends and look at pictures from the beginning of our school last year and not get just a little choked up. I mean, why on earth does this all have to keep going SO fast?!

I look at my beautiful oldest daughter Vienna. She's going into 2nd grade.

Did you hear me?! SECOND grade!

It's just not possible - she was a sweet toddler learning her ABCs last week, and it was about 2 days ago that I was stressing about figuring out what to do for our homeschool curriculum and what our days would look like. Now I feel like we're "seasoned" homeschoolers and pretty much have things figured out...well, almost - ha!

She has grown up exponentially in the past year. She would rather do almost nothing than read or draw/color....except ride her bike, of course, and play with her brother and baby sister. She is just SO grown up. I don't know what happened.

And then I look at the changes in our tenderhearted Porter over the past year. Man, oh man, has he "come into his own". He's opened up, lost SO much timid-ness, and seriously can make friends any place we go now. He's not just riding on his sister's coattails anymore...HE finds friends on his very own. It's kind of awesome to see.

I love watching their interests grow and mature as they find what they love and pursue it.

And don't even get me started on the baby. Can it really be? Is she for real 10 months today? I think back to a year ago and where I was in pregnancy and what we were doing and how I was feeling. It's amazing the change that just one year can bring.

But that's just it.

It's a FULL year. We are all a year older. 365 day wiser.

So why does it seem like it's only been a week?

I mean, I've got a full year of memories. I KNOW it's really been that long. Yesterday I was looking at a family photo we did right after Ember was born and I was in shock at how young the older kids looked. Then it occurred to me how long it had actually been.

I don't know. Maybe I'm all gooey emotional because Ember is 10 months today. Maybe it's because my baby brother is getting married next weekend. Maybe I'm hormonal.

Or maybe I'm like this because I somehow feel like I'm missing it.

I'm guessing other moms feel this way sometimes, too. I think I'm just feeling like I can't "see the forest because the trees are in the way", know what I mean? All of the day's details, work, food, diapers, tangled hair, spilled milk, piles of laundry, more work, etc are getting in my way of seeing and absorbing the joy of the season of life that we are currently in.

Life is busy.

I need to remember to enjoy it and see the whole thing....not just the trees.

~Evie