4.09.2006

All good things. . .

It's that time again. It's growing late on a Sunday night and I sit here hoping to prolong the weekend just by a little. I'll take what I can squeeze out of it. Yet alas, it never works. Time moves ahead without my consent.

My work week is a short one in reality. Once we're past Tuesday I work when and if I feel like it for the most part. However, with the other half of the parenting team at work a normal full week, the weekends are still very well defined and very welcomed.

Those two days are packed with as much as we can fit in and yet it never seems enough. This morning we watched the boy march in with his Sunday School class. The kids aged 2 through 10 were waving palm branches and escorting their little fish banks full of One Great Hour of sharing contributions. They marched up the center aisle and to the front to sing for us - with us. Logan, who two years ago would hardly leave our side, marched proudly waving his branch in greeting to everyone he made eye contact with. He's just slightly less than two months from his 4th birthday. When standing with the other kids in his class - this morning mostly 2 year olds with a few 'newly' three year olds - he seemed so very big. And yet, when surrounded with the kids from the older classes, he also looked so very small.

It's just moving too fast. He's growing faster than I can keep up.

The girl went on her very first "special" outting with the Grandparents. They began taking Logan for special trips out when he was about 20 months old. That led to what has become the once a month sleep-over extraganza. Meg will be 19 months old at the end of this week. Today she got her turn.

She left just after her nap. We told her about it this morning and she was very excited. "Papa, Gam boardwalk!" she'd tell us when the mood struck her. She'd not been to the boardwalk since the weather got cool in October. I wasn't sure she really knew what it was, but she caught on that it was something good. We told her about the carosel. We told her about the ice cream. She couldn't wait to go.

She clearly had a good time. Upon leaving she cried "No Fair! More boardwalk!" When she got home she told me softly "Papa horse. Round, round, round. Me, Papa go horse." Which loosely translated is "Papa took me on the merry-go-round." She told me about playing Skee Ball ("Throw ball. Gam do.") She told me about the ice cream, apparently it came with sprinkles.

"Megan, did you have ice cream with Papa and Grandma?" I asked her.

She nodded. Her eyes grew wide in what is her most serious expression. "Rainbow!" she told me.

"It had sprinkles on it?" She gave me a puzzled look in return. I continued, "Your ice cream had a lot of colors on it?"

She nodded. "Rainbow!"

Time has marched ahead quickly. The little infant girl I held on to as the toddler boy bounced out the door for his sleepovers a year ago is now her own person full of ponies and rainbows.

I sit here late at night on a Sunday. I watch the sand of time slip between my fingers as the seconds waste away. My weekend is over and those two little imps are yet another set of days older, only sometimes it feels like it's much more than that.

3 comments:

Linda said...

Like sand through the hourglass, these are the days of our lives (am I dating myself???)

I am with you on the child front. My daughter stood with the children's choir for the first time and sang (and waved her palm branch). She's grown up too fast. My boy is 2 and he has, in the last month, gained verbal acuity...scary. He's asking questions, making sentences and surprising us daily. And it's hard to let go with grace.

Anonymous said...

What a beautiful post, and certainly one you'l go back to in times to come as a reminder of this one weekend!

atpanda said...

Awe, great story Sandy! Kids do grow up so fast.... Pretty soon dates!
Michele sent me today.