Growing up

So I am emotional this week. Usually I am able to keep a lid on it, hold myself together, but not this week. As I remember Koen and mourn the loss of him, I find myself grieving other losses as well.  Tobin has started to walk this week, with the use of his little old man walker.  When I snuggle him, he wiggles to get down, so excited to move.  He's growing up, beginning to break away before he is even a year.  He is my last baby, so I find myself slowly saying goodbye to these stages, knowing they will not return to our home.

Hackett has transformed this year, grown up.  It makes me well up with pride and excitement to see all that he is becoming and will be, but I weep at the little boy who is no longer.  Holding my hand is now something rare and each time he does I make note of it.  That little hand lived in mine everywhere we went for years, but he is continuing to break away.  It starts with a wiggle off of your lap, then the independence of not needing your hand to be guided through the world, and before I know it he will be cruising in to the Bullock Creek Gymnasium to Pomp and Circumstance like some of my Creekers are doing tonight. He's growing up, and it seemed to happen, quite literally, overnight. 

Today at school his class did a poetry reading of poems they had authored.  His teacher had a special surprise for us, they all put baseball caps on their little heads and sang this song along with Kenny Rogers.  To hear their precious voices.  To know they have been loved so well by a teacher who wants to teach them that in life its about hanging in there and a matter of attitude, perspective.  Realizing this was my last function at his current elementary school, that we love and adore so much.  To see my big grown up guy, who was sick after striking out at bat twice this week, sing his heart out.  I just couldn't.  I couldn't hold back my big giant mommy tears, that are full of joy, love, pride, and grief, all at the same time.

And because those tears weren't enough.  I decided I needed to examine in photographs, the rapid growth, and years gone, with my Hackett.