The moments that pass us by

Milestones are talked about a lot when you have kids, especially with younger kids. First smile, first steps, first word, first day at school. And we celebrate and worry about those milestones in equal measure. But I find it’s the moments that pass us by unnoticed until after the fact, that make me realise my kids are growing up.

Just today for example, Little was walking around quite happily with a giant green slug oozing from his nose, with no desire to remove it had I not requested he blow his nose. Even that request was met with complaints! And I realised that Big would never walk round with a giant green slug anymore. He himself is extremely repulsed by his little brothers slug. Even though when he was 8, as his little brother is now, he would have walked around with the slug. But I can’t help but wonder, when did that change? It was a moment that passed me by.

There are so many of these moments. I don’t know when Big stopped holding my hand when crossing the road. Maybe I would have savoured the last time and held it a bit tighter had I known it was the last time. Maybe I would have let him stay up later if I had know it was the last time he would be lost in an imagined world with his action figures.

Did you know that journey was going to be the last time you used the buggy? I didn’t. It was a few month later when I realised that the buggy was gathering dust, that we just weren’t using it anymore. Those days had passed. I miss the buggy. Mainly because I now have to carry everything, and I’m years away from justifiably owning a Solley.

The gifts they buy you change too. It starts with teddy bears that you know will end up in their room, or Lego sets that they truly believe you will love because they do. Then it goes onto personalised gifts that normally say “Mum” on them, because that’s who you are. Mugs and personalised wine glasses. And eventually they start thinking outside of their world and into yours, and buy you things you love. Of course you will use that mum mug until the end of time because they chose it and therefore you love it.

These moments pass us by and its hind sight that makes us realise they have changed so much. I guess it’s that same way we hold a friend’s new-born and realise we have forgotten how tiny babies are. Were ours ever that small. In the moment you think you will remember it all. But you don’t. It’s impossible. Instead you remember snippets through triggered memories, and you hold them tight or laugh at something that at the time was so horrendous you never thought one day you would laugh about it. The hour long mother of all tantrums held by little outside the cinema springs to mind.

It’s having two kids at the ages they are now makes me realise how quickly childhood ends. My once overly confident child who would happily sing and dance for anyone, is now a shy somewhat awkward 12 year old. And whilst my 8 year old has never been one to perform in public, he is always singing to himself as he walks around the house. Yet I know one day not to far from now, I will suddenly notice that he isn’t singing anymore, and I won’t be able to remember when it stopped.

Where is that line between singing and dancing with you in the kitchen, to calling you “cringe” and leaving you in a kitchen disco for one?

When was the last time he dressed up a a superhero?

The boy who would strip of naked given any opportunity, and who had no qualms about walking into a room full of my friends bleary eyed and butt naked to tell me he was too hot in bed, now shouts if I dare enter his room when he is getting dressed and demands privacy.

Sometimes there are moments that we wish would pass us by. The toddler meltdown in the supermarket, the poonami in the car, the chickenpox. But if any parenting cliché is true it is that ‘this too shall pass’.

Of course there are some lesser discussed milestones that make our lives so much easier. Like when they can wipe their own butt, or they throw up in the sick bowl and you no longer need to catch vomit with your hands.

Watching these little people grow is an amazing privellege. But it is all so bitter sweet. Because for all the amazing firsts that we share, there are so many lasts that pass us by.