life; it goes by so quickly, doesn't it?

oh hai blogger! it's been a while (cue that song by stain'd)

I will save all the commentary on my well intentioned thoughts about writing here and the excuses that prevented me from doing so and instead I will just move on. Like a wise individual once pointed out - you should never draw attention to your flaws.

So here I am, on the eve of my very first Mother's Day and the Eve, Eve of my baby boy's Six Month Birthday (formally known as his Half Birthday in my family).

Six months. Six months old. How oh how is that possible?

Time, it does go by quickly, doesn't it?

Today my best friend stopped by for a visit and to scope out our new house. She and I have known one another since we were 4 and 5 years old and playing with blocks on our kindergarten floor. Now, 23 years later, we sat in my livingroom discussing my little baby's first teeth coming in and her busy urban career. So strange how quickly life has brought us here. So strange how quickly I know it will deliver us to our next phases of life. I said, "Sometime relatively soon we will be old ladies having tea together and reminiscing about our lives." 

And while I know that technically that tea-time between us is quite a ways off, the message behind it is the same: this is all going by really freaking fast already. Way too fast if you want my opinion. 

I can almost still feel what it feels like to be a child. I can almost still put myself back in that place where I'm getting tucked in by my father, or feel what it's like to rest my head on my mother's lap and have her stroke my hair. I can almost still close my eyes and convince myself I'm waking up on the morning of my birthday party - excitement welling up within.

But here I am, an adult with a husband who turns thirty in just under two weeks and a baby sleeping peacefully upstairs. Here I am, a mother myself to a child who lays his head down on me and falls asleep, who turns to bury his face in my chest when something startles him. Here I am, and somehow in the blink of an eye and a whole entire lifetime has occurred. It's amazing how fast that happened. And while I am ready for this life and I embrace it with love and enthusiasm and excitement, I can't believe how QUICKLY it has arrived.

Wasn't I just starting High School? Wasn't I just nervously attending my first college classes? Wasn't I only just arguing with my parents that I was old enough to go on vacation with my friends alone, that it really was time for me to move out, that I really was ready for all of the responsibilities of an adult?

Didn't I just meet the love of my life? Weren't we just planning our wedding? And moving in together? Didn't I only JUST discover I was pregnant?

How is this all going by so quickly?

Will I always feel this way? Will I always be able to close my eyes and recall the beginning, even when I am close to the end? If so, how very sad and tragic it is to die I imagine...feeling so young and alive inside but having the outside not quite match those feelings. I guess I always assumed that once you reached a very old age that you would have felt that it was enough already and you were somehow ready to go...but if life continues on like this how will anyone ever feel like it's enough?

Oh well, sorry for the heavy and perhaps morbid twist. These are the things I think about regularly and this is the place I think I should start to share my thoughts. 

The point is, life has moved so quickly but I have loved it - all of it. And I am so grateful for the place where I am now. Oh lord am I so grateful. 

And even though I cried today because my little baby is about to be six months old and start solid foods and that little thing itself is one step that takes him away from me, i know there are great things to come. There are more snuggles, more babies, more moments, more hugs, more laughter, more occasions, more birthdays and christmases, more trips, more dances and more gifts. There are endlessly more memories to share and more milestones to reach and I am truly looking forward to the future so very much. I think I'm going to make it a point to pause and try to breathe it all in though because I have a feeling the next years of my life are going to blip on by me and honestly, I want to hold onto them tightly and feel every single little bit of them before they rush through my hands and I'm left with nothing but the feeling of them tingling on my palms.