Motherhood happens slowly and quickly all at the same time.
It was gorgeous outside today, and my toddler daughter was feeling antsy so we went outside to play. She spent the hours picking at blades of grass, pointing at the airplanes flying overhead, and marching up and down our concrete driveway, babbling away at me in her toddler gibberish and beckoning me to follow her here and there. Those hours crept slowly and pleasantly by, as we giggled and discovered the world together in the fading autumn light.
Four loads of laundry lay unfolded inside. The upstairs hasn't been vacuumed in weeks. A pile of papers sits on the kitchen counter, waiting to make its way to our filing cabinet. I could have spent my afternoon accomplishing any one of those tasks. And perhaps it would have made me feel a little less overwhelmed tonight as I sit and wonder how another day has sped past.
But today as my daughter and I mindlessly whiled away the afternoon, we also watched the neighborhood "big kids" walking home from school, taking selfies with their smartphones, chatting about this and that, and making weekend plans to hang out. I looked down at my tiny precious toddler and thanked God for these slow moments that pass all too quickly. I know it won't be long before she won't want to spend her afternoons sitting in the grass with me. She will grow up, make friends, and not need me in the same way that she does now. I treasure these simple days that fade as swiftly and silently as the autumn sun. They will pass before I know it. So I will while away as many as she will allow.
I will vacuum when she is a teenager.
