Time passes...

Haven't written in awhile, I gave up after the time with both my kids became more important. With both home from school, I had lots of projects to do with them, and fun I wanted to have, but this became the nine year old's summer of discovery, and I wasn't ready for it. He went to summer camp by himself for a week, and wants to go for two weeks next year. Sleepovers with friends turned into two days without him every time they happened, and I couldn't tell him no. Plus time over at his dad's, including their eight day vacation, and now I feel like I really didn't see him. As a parent, you try to do the best thing for your kids, and now I'm watching him slowly grow and make those decisions I'd hoped he'd make, and I don't want him to.

School started Monday. Fourth grade. He's rather non-plussed about it. Wasn't he just a kindergartner? He had no problem with me walking him to class, I'm tearing up at the first-day-of-school kiss goodbye. I'm watching him set up his desk (from thirty feet away, where all the other parents were), he's unpacking his new backpack and getting comments from some of the other kids about how cool it is, and he's telling them how he paid for the backpack with his allowance money and saved for it most of the summer. That's my kid? He's asking others he hasn't seen about their summer and that it's nice to see them again. My kid? One of the other moms makes a comment. "David is so grown up now." I want to suddenly grab him and run from the room, go home, sit on the bed under the covers, and curl up watching Thomas the Tank Engine videos or Toy Story together. I've always been aware of the passing of time, and had a healthy respect for it, so I never expected it to slap me in the face.

That night, as we were going through notes from the teacher, and going over class rules and responsibilities, I knew there was something he wanted to talk about, but I couldn't pull it from him. We talked about his day, if he liked where he was sitting, what he was excited about and what he was nervous about and so on. After his shower, and some bedtime reading, it was lights out. He said good night to everyone and crawled into bed, and asked if I would crawl in with him for a minute. Not a strange request, he asks me once or twice a week. But when he told me he didn't think I would, now that he's in fourth grade, I grabbed on and didn't let go, well, when he started turning blue I did.