i prefer time with my children to be calorie-dense and rich in fiber

Yesterday was Haney's 5th birthday, and I skipped out on posting because I was so tired and fell asleep on the couch before 9:45.

The other day I was thinking about her birthday and how 5 feels like such a big milestone. I realized I feel like I've only just caught my breath, and here she is 5 years old. For the last decade I've been just trying to catch my breath. It goes by in a flash.

The long days of breastfeeding on the hour, cleaning up potty training messes, breaking up fights, and non-stop crying are gone. I have only the vaguest of memories of those days. Thank God I started blogging or I'd have nothing from the kids' babyhood.

I spent much of the last decade thinking about how I would be able to do different things once the kids got older, once things got easier. I didn't have lofty goals; I was thinking of things like grocery shopping with the kids, sleeping through the night, taking them to the zoo, leaving the house at all, showering regularly... And things *are* easier now and I can do all of those things, but it gives me pause to realize how quickly the time goes. When I find myself thinking, "In another two years I can homeschool the kids and spend more time with them," it makes me uneasy knowing how fast that time will go. Another two years will be gone before I know it.

This week, as the situation with Jason's union at work and his holiday time has developed, we realized that he will be working every holiday from now on. He will not be able to schedule vacation during school breaks. By the time he has the seniority within this union to take holidays or summer vacations, our kids will be grown. Because he sees the kids about an hour each day, from when they wake up to when he drops them off at school, we really hold onto our family time. We rarely make weekend social plans unless they include the whole family. The week off during the summer and the long holiday weekends are our chance to make up for all the weekday evenings we miss out on throughout the year.

I'm seeing how I have great intentions but, if I'm being realistic, following through on those intentions will just cause a lot of stress and weeping and gnashing of teeth and bed wetting and fighting, so I tell myself, "We'll do that when they're older." But 1) When they're older they might not want to do dumb crafts with me, and 2) I'm going to have such a backlog of things to do that we'll never get to them all.

I want to be purposeful in how I spend these next few precious years. In just 14 years all my kids will have graduated high school. That seems like plenty of time until I figure in the busy teen years, and how quickly the last decade has gone. It's not easy to be purposeful, though, when we're struggling to get from point A to point B in a short amount of time, and still work in homework and dinner and baths... I can spend an entire evening with my kids doing those things, without having a real conversation with any of them.

What do you do to work in those moments of real connection? This weekend I'm going to try to make a real connection with at least one of my kids each hour that they're awake. They will probably be creeped out and feel like I'm stalking them. I will document my inevitable failure for you here.