We all know we're supposed to try and enjoy each moment, especially when raising little kids, because you hear about 1,000 times a day how quickly time passes. But when you're living it, it really doesn't feel like it's passing very fast at all. And sometimes when you're staring at the clock waiting for it to be a reasonable hour to send your children to bed, and that hour is still at least 2 hours away, and kids are screaming and fighting and whining, and crying... it feels like time stops. Not in a romantic lovely way, but in a "How the crap is it only 4:45?!" kind of way.

And then you read some blog post about how it's okay to not love every minute, and you feel better.

But lately (as in the past two days) I have been loving every minute more. I know it's crazy, but some day it will be really weird to get Nathan out of the bath, and while drying him off ask him if he's delicious, and then pretend to eat his tummy and make him crack up. When he's 1, that's normal and cute. When he's 20 that's totally creepy.

Maybe it has to do with Aaron's brother receiving his mission call (Russia!) and realizing that some day that will be my baby boy. I mean wasn't it just yesterday Samuel was 10 and eating paper? Time really does fly, and I'm feeling it. So tonight instead of putting on cartoons for my kids while I went on facebook/pinterest/whatever, I turned everything off and just sat and watched cartoons with them. I remembered sitting on my Poppy's lap in his recliner and watching Looney Toons. I loved having him watch it with me, and I distinctly remember being aware that he was enjoying it. Or at least he was doing a good job pretending to. In fact he did such a good job that I genuinely believed he loved Road Runner so much that I called him every single time it came on, to let him know it was on so he could go watch it. I was a thoughtful child like that. Never mind that it was a long distance phone call at the time! Anyway, as all three kids tried to cuddle on my lap, I could tell how happy they were that I was enjoying the cartoons too.

And when it came time to put them to bed I wasn't rushing to get the heck away from them and to my precious bath tub where I could unwind from the day, I lingered and sang a few extra songs, and tried to be patient with their 50 million end of the day questions. ("Is God the king of the whole universe, or just earth? Did the girl have a key for the secret garden? What are we going to do tomorrow?")

I know this is a phase, and surely I'll be going crazy again soon, but the last two days have been nice. At least in this regard. Let's not talk about how my brain is shrinking with each pregnancy and I can't form a complete thought, and today I may or not have backed out of my garage before opening the garage door all the way... yes slightly damaging both the car, and the garage door. And how I can't remember to plug my phone in and keep it charged for more than 24 hours. And how I burned dinner so badly tonight we ended up having cereal. Lest I led you to believe every moment is magic around here the past 48 hours.