Can I just bottle this stage up?

I do enjoy being a mom. I write the simple statement not to convince myself, but to remind myself that in the constant of each day, I have the greatest job on earth.

Some moms are great at every stage. I, on the other hand, seem to be finding my nitch as they are getting older, knowing we are fulfilled as a family of five and are trying to do our very best with the 3 boys God has given us. The early months were hard with little sleep and raging hormones. The end of the first year brought teething and flying food. It's the stage that Asher is in right now (15 months) that I want to bottle up. Don't get me wrong. I'd bottle up the smell of newborns, the jumbled sentences of a toddler, and the first time I heard mommy or got that first smile back. However, Ben and I find ourselves frantically calling for the other to catch Asher "in the act." Whether its pointing the wii remote towards the tv, putting a baseball inside a glove, or pointing towards the microwave where he thinks his milk sippy cup magically appears!

I guess being the third child, he sadly skips over lots of the little stages that Elijah had. He skipped trains and Wiggles and thinks he'll be three years old tomorrow. He can successfully make it to the peak of the Chik-fil-a playground and come down the slide on his own and thinks he deserves the whole banana like his big brothers. Before we know it, he will be eating a pound of sausage and catching fly balls. I'll stop before I wish my favorite stage away.

He's toddling in here right now in his footed pajamas with Apple Jacks in hand. Since I can't really bottle it up, I'd better go enjoy him and his big brothers while I can!



And as for this rocking chair, I have rocked every one of our babies in it. Singing songs, holding them close when they were afraid or sick, and sometimes just because I didn't want to put them down. We are in the process of downsizing as we are preparing to move to San Francisco to start a church in June 2010. With downsizing comes the giving away and selling of even some precious things. But as the buyers drove away with this rocker, I was holding Asher in my arms. I looked at him and told him, "They might have taken away the rocker, but they haven't taken away who I have rocked."