YOU'RE GONNA MISS THIS

I guess I am at the age where when I listen to the radio, some of the songs makes me laugh my a** off, or I get real melancholy listening to the lyrics. I usually listen to the country station going to and from work each day. Most of these songs have a message that I can understand, both verbally and mentally.This morning I was listening to the song by Trace Atkins," You're Gonna Miss This". It kind of made me get a little misty eyed. All of the things in the song brought back times in my life when we were raising our family. The times that we tried to rush past. The times we wanted too much to soon. The times we wished our children to be a little older so they could do things for themselves. No more diapers or bottles. Hurry up and feed yourself, dress yourself, tie your own shoes. You know all the things that seem to be such a drag when you are actually living the whole experience.

I hope my kids right now will try to slow down the process of raising their kids. Let the children be children. Give them some responsibility, but let the be kids. Don't try to make them sandlot stars when they would rather be playing in a sandbox. Let them make a mess sometime, just make them help clean it up. Let them run and squeal and laugh, they can't be quiet all the time, but teach them to respect your quiet/reading/nap time.

Discourage them from thinking they have to have a boy/girl friend from the time they start pre-k. It is impossible for two little kids to be going with each other unless mom and dad are taking them. There is time for dating when they get to be teenagers.

Some of the things I miss is the way little children smell when they have just had their baths and are all snuggled into their jammies and ready to say their prayers. Listening to them playing pretend, when they don't know you're listening, and the funny things they will say. How kids will fight with their siblings like wild cats but don't let another person try to pick on their brother/sister. The claws will really come out then. That is sometimes the only way you would know that they really love each other.

John and I have been in the house with just the two of us now for the last eight or nine years. We had a lot of years of raising children. Our oldest is 42 and our youngest is 28 or will be soon. It has been a little hard sometime adjusting. I go into the girls bedroom and it is halfway neat. The bed is made. No clothes strewn all over the floor. In the closet is a tub of toys that only get pulled out when the grand kids come in. Usually a doll propped on the pillows. I look out the kitchen window and the tree where all the kids and grand kids played looks deserted with the leaves having fallen off and a lone baby swing dangling from one of the lower limbs. (In my mind I call this our empty tree). Then there is the basketball goal that we put up when the kids were home and no one uses it anymore, as a matter of fact , we use it now as parking space and the basket balls are lying under lawn tables and the fig tree. To top it all off the dog that Mark left here when he moved to Memphis lives down the street at the neighbors house. Waylon only comes home if he sees some of the grand kids here and he barks at us as though we are a couple of strangers if we decide to take a walk in the neighborhood. Can you believe that?

Enjoy the time you are in, at any given time. Before you know it you will be looking back and saying, "Where in the world did the time go".