Growing Kids - Not Grass

It has been a while since I have written, and even longer since I have written directly concerning the message of the blog--"Growing Kids, Not Grass."
Recently I experienced a situation which was a great reminder for me to remind you of the message of the blog.
It was the Thanksgiving season, a time for school programs, and feasts prepared in splendid abundance. Such was the situation I found myself in a few weeks ago. I had the pleasure of attending one of our grandson's preschool Thanksgiving program and then to share in the feast with his classmates, teachers, and family. Such excitement filled the air, the culmination of many weeks of practices and then the big show! Added to that list of reasons for electric joy, the Thanksgiving holidays were starting with the end of the feast and days of fun and cousins and food were joyously ahead!
We completed all of the scheduled activities and I was given a detailed tour of Micah's school and classroom, by Micah himself! What fun to enter the world of a 4 year old and experience the sights, smells, and colors of his world! I was as excited to see it all as Micah was to share it with me.
As we made our way through the halls of his school, Micah and big brother, Jacob, hopped, skipped, and sometimes ran ahead, narrowly escaping a crash or two with the oncoming traffic of fellow classmates and their families, even dodging a couple of strollers here and there!
I basked in the joy of watching my grandsons excitedly skip and run, and observed the abundance of mommies and daddies experiencing the balancing act of corralling their children, and I was taken back to the days when I was the mommy, and MY kids were the ones running the halls and MY baby was in the stroller! And it suddenly seemed like yesterday! Ahhhh, how well I remember those days, days which, though exciting, seemed light years long! The juggling of strollers, endless changing of diapers, making sure the older kids got the amount of attention they needed while meeting the needs of an infant; chasing my older kids down school halls, calling out for them to "slow down and be careful" as they darted in and out of the fast approaching human traffic; all over too soon! I was overwhelmingly struck by how quickly my life had progressed from mommy leading the chase down the hall to grandmother bringing up the rear! And I thought to myself, I wish I had savored the times and cherished the harried moments, and embraced every aspect of my kids "growing up" years as if it would all be over in a snap. Because it WAS over in a snap! Much quicker than I ever dreamed it would be! And I will tell you like I told my daughter-in-love, the mommy of those two precious boys, cherish the moments you have with your little ones, no matter how hectic, how tiring, how challenging they can be. Before you know it, YOU will be bringing up the rear, watching it all from "afar", reminiscing of sweet days gone by. Now, I savor those moments as "Ninny", not "Mommy", which, by the way, is a joy indescribable. But for you, in the stage of life you are in now, remember, "You are growing kids, not grass" and you don't want to miss any detail of this fleeting time!