My boys have two weeks of school left, so we are counting down the days to summer vacation, but as a mom, I’m also counting down the number of summers I have left with them; nine with my youngest, and only seven with my oldest. Only nine more summers, and the beautiful days of childhood are gone forever.

When you’re caught up in the craziness that is having young children, you think you’ll never dig your way out of diapers, bottles, and onesies. You feel like the sleepless nights will drag on until the end of days and you’ll have a baby on your hip forever, and then one day you find yourself sitting at the table beside a kid with hairy legs and a grown-up voice and you think “when did this happen?” Your baby doesn’t look like a baby anymore, and it hits you hard and fast that time is ticking and your summers are running out.

Now, I’m not trying to make you cry. There are plenty of awesome things about having older kids. They sleep all night, for one, and you have to drag them out of bed instead and praying they sleep in past 5 am.  They have real conversations with you, and it’s awesome to watch them grow into men and women and see that all that time and work you put in paid off. It’s nice to see that they really are going to be okay.

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