There are a few moments in a mom’s life that are undefinably big.  Giving birth, kindergarten, a fat glass of wine at the end of a long day, to name a few.  

Tonight I am taking KeenanKeenan aka: Kman
Age: 14
"Special" Qualities: Door slamming, stomping and eye rolling (can do it all in one impressive motion).
Best Qualities: The softest kindest heart, hysterical and quite charming when he tries. to his high school registration.  Come again?  Wasn’t it just last week that he was as small as his brother is in this photo?  A few days ago that I was bawling in my car because I had just dropped him off at kindergarten?  Wasn’t it literally just yesterday that he started middle school?  Where did it go?

I have never been one of those people that say or even grasp the whole, “enjoy it now, it goes too fast” concept.  When you have small children, you enjoy what you can, when you can.  You can’t possibly grasp this vague idea that someday they will be out of the house and you will miss them.  Suddenly, I am grasping it.

The enormity of it has surprised me.  I'm the mom that is excited about the day the kids go to college.  I have this image that plays in my head of my husband and I high-fiving each other with the last college drop off, racing home to champagne and painting each of their rooms pink.  In my husband’s dream it’s beer and workshops, but you get the picture.  Apparently I am not the bad ass I think I am.   

As I fall asleep over the next four years I imagine my thoughts will be something like, please let him make the teams he wants to make.  Please let kids not pick on him.  Please sweet mother, let the girls be nicer to him than I was to boys at that age.  But if those things don’t happen, please let me have given him the strength and confidence to overcome all of the obstacles.   

My philosophy on parenting is summed up in this quote by Dorothy Canfield Fisher, “A mother is not a person to lean on but a person to make leaning unnecessary.”  I am about to find out how well I did my job.