Growing and growing…

I spent the beautiful morning cleaning house and doing chores, putting away the clothes of my children. The pants and socks and underwear and shirts that just keep getting bigger and bigger…  There is simply no stopping them.  Just like the babies, the ones that are now kids.

I rinsed the same colorful, plastic dishes with cut marks on them, that I have probably put in the dishwasher a million times.  In the cabinet I saw sippy cups, that are rarely used these days.

I picked up tiny little toys and put back big toys where they belong. I swept up itty bitty Legos and dust bunnies. I was generous enough to take the Legos out before I threw the junk into the trash can.

Even though my children were at school I thought about them a ton.  I spent so much time in the boys’ room and closet, tidying, doing what a mother does for her little sons.  As I organized their things I laughed a little to myself, wondering why I was even taking the time.  But even if it only stayed that way for a bit, it was a good thing.

In my little girl’s room, I cleaned up her play kitchen and her dollies.  I loaded her grocery cart with so much pretend food.  As I was placing the cheese and peppers and butter and waffles into it, I suddenly remembered a photo of me as a little girl, pushing my own, similar cart lots of years ago.  What is it about little girls and pretend shopping?  Just gearing up for the real thing, I guess.

Later that afternoon I pushed an actual cart through the aisles and aisles of food, list in hand.  I placed so many of the same things in my cart that I do every week.  The items I know they love because I love them.

In the checkout line the cashier and I chatted and she told me about how a lady earlier that day did not have enough money to pay for her 10 or so items and none of her credit cards would work.  I started to get sad and think about how if I had been behind her I would have paid for her things and JUST in that same moment the cashier told me that the lady behind her did just THAT.  My heart smiled and I decided I would tell this story to my babies, who will become grown-ups too someday.  Grown-ups who I hope would offer to do just the same…

I’m supposed to take a pic of my THREE kids on the third of each month but it has YET to happen.  Here are two of them on the 3rd… Little G was still on a Saturday “date” with just his Daddy when I took this.  If you would like to see his killer dimple in action from just a couple of days ago, you can refer to this post.