Then they do.....

Im not talking about anything other than time.  Where does it all go?  The harder we hold on, the faster it seems to evaporate. I have spent the past few days going "this time last week..." referring to some point of time when I was on vacation with my family.  That time just seemingly went by so fast.  Im pretty sure no matter how long you had with your family like that, with your loved one(s) it would never be enough.  But I can't get over how fast it seemed to go.  That got me started thinking about a lot of other things.  I looked at Reagan the other day when she went out to play with her sisters, she looked 12.  So tall, so grown up looking.  Our lives have been so filled with babies and raising kids that the last few years are just a blur.  Someone looked at our wedding photos yesterday and she told Brooke, man- Boomer looked so young (that was 8 years ago for the record).  I don't mind getting old, it happens.  What I hate is losing time.  I miss when Reagan was younger and all she wanted was me and her binky.  Sometimes I miss when Caroline was "Bob" or when Baylor Grace didn't talk.  I blinked and now Reagan is Stretch Armstrong, Caroline is a pretty little girl, Baylor Grace is a bombshell with a singing voice, and now we have Hadley.  Where did it all go?  I think it is worse because they are girls.  From the moment I first held them in my arms and their tiny little hand grabbed my finger, a father knows he is going to lose her.  That's what she is going to do, that's what you want them to do.  You want her to grow up and replace you and yet it is the hardest thing to come to terms with.  With each passing day and each birthday celebration they are closer to letting you go.  Robert E. Lee told James Longstreet "To be a good soldier, you must love the army. To be a good commander, you must be willing to order the death of the thing you love."  To be a good father I must love my girls and prepare them for the day without me.  I get that...its just so hard to be okay with.  And the further along we get, the faster it all seems to go.  

Different jobs, different cities, different houses.  This morning Baylor Grace woke me up at 6 again (like most mornings) and I was so furious- in her defense she did go back to sleep.  I couldn't wait for her to be a big girl and not do that. Later in the morning after Caroline and Reagan woke up, they barely said a word to me when they did except to ask 1) for breakfast) or 2) what does Captain Jack Sparrow look like?  I will let you guess which girl asked question number one and which girl asked question number two.   So I had the two big girls and were feeding them and I was hit by a sneezing attack.  From seemingly the heavens above I hear "blessh you Daddy."  It was Baylor Grace who had gotten herself out of bed-which  she isn't supposed to do- and was already down the stairs with two different bears in hand.  She is getting to be a big girl too.  Sometimes it seems as though we cant wait for the girls to grow up, to be self sufficient, to be people....then they do.  And we miss when they were babies. 

Dad will be 66 in Dec, Brooke just turned 30, where did all the time go? My Dad and I had a conversation about when the girls are a particular age, what age will I be?  It just all hit me about how fast time really does fly.  And it is sad. Not because you get old but because you miss the great times of the past and you understand that everything around you is changing.  Like it or not.

 We get so busy raising kids and paying bills, we forget to stop and look around. Ferris Beuller was spot on.