Happy Mother's Day!

Well, I'm about 2 hours away from Mother's (Mothers'?) Day right now. We've just finished an awesome day together. Caleb let me sleep in, which was desperately needed. Then we went to Connor's soccer game (we finally had fairly decent weather for it today--well, this morning, anyway.....). Then we had nap time. I love it when we can all 4 manage to get a nap in! After that, we made a trip to the mall and I had a Mother's Day mini-shopping spree. (I managed to find some sandals. I still hadn't bought any since my first blog entry.) After that, we came home, put the kids in bed and I've been putzing around ever since (trying on my new clothes, straightening up my room, now I'm on the computer). All in all it's been a pretty perfect day!

Now onto the not so perfect.

Tonight I had a realization as a I changed Riley's diaper. You see, when we change our kids, we say "Feet up" when we get to the point where we need to slide the new diaper underneath them. They then raise their feet in the air, which lifts their little bottoms off the floor just enough to get the clean diaper in place. It's a little convenience that we've trained our children to provide us. Now that the Con-Man is potty trained, we obviously no longer use this little method with him. But Miss Riley has it down pat.

What is your point, Kim? you ask. My point is this--tonight when I said this to Riley, I had a flashback. I was in the hospital with tiny Baby Riley. She was only a day or so old. I was changing her diaper on my hospital bed. It was just us girls in the room at the time. I remember laughing at myself because I had said "feet up" to my 36-hour-old infant while changing her diaper. In that moment, I realized how difficult it was going to be for me to cater to the different needs of my 2 year old son and my brand new daughter. I found myself wishing to fast forward to the time when I'd be able to say "feet up" to Riley and get the desired result. Now that time is here, and I just wish that I could go back and relive all the stuff in between.

I miss my baby. I miss both of them. Last night I was scrap-booking, and I was sifting through some baby pictures of Connor. I just can't get over how much he's grown! Last night he got to go to the Relay for Life event at the high school with Caleb. He came home with a monkey-tattoo on his cheek! He's so into "big kid" things these days! Riley got to go along, too. She came home with a set of beads to wear (which, of course, I promptly took away since they are a strangulation hazard). What happened to my babies?!?!

Tomorrow I celebrate my 5th Mother's Day as a mom (2004 counts, even though I hadn't actually given birth to a child yet). Five Mother's Days! It's just going too, too fast. I'm going to make a Mother's Day Resolution this year: I'm going to try to free up more time for my kids. I already do a fairly decent job of this (as much as a full-time work-outside-the house-mom can), but I could do better. In the past week or so, I've caught myself telling Connor that I couldn't stop to snuggle him because I had work to do one more than one occasion. Well, the laundry can wait. So can the dishes. Now that school is slowing down some, and summer will soon be here, I'm going to do a better job of spending quality time with my kids.

I'm going to go to bed now so that I can wake up with them in the morning and start my new resolution!

Happy Mother's Day to you, too!!!!