Seriously, the holiday season really brings it out, all by itself.  I'm fairly well adjusted to my kids being grown up or nearly grown up, but every now and then it is really sad to remember what it was like to be the mother of a small child.  My kids are probably getting a little tired of hearing me repeat all the cute things they did every time we all get together...but I HAVE to!  Such a great opportunity when they bring their significant others over.  

My kids are all still very affectionate, however.  I had midnight calls from the two who have left home last night...and quite frankly, they're all a little more huggy-kissy than I am.  We're all big on the "I love yous", though.

The "I love you forever, I'll love you for always" story was made into an elementary school play in my son's 4th grade class, oh so many years ago.  At the time, I had been tending to my own Mother who lived on the East Coast (I live on the west coast) and who had been ill with cancer...during the play which was held in May for Mother's Day I was quite the mommy goo due to the juxtaposition of watching my ds tend to his classmate who played his ailing and elderly Mom, I, having just come from the East Coast and had been doing exactly that.  I was hard-pressed to keep from flooding everyone with my tears, both for my own sense of loss with my MOm and for watching my sweet boy play out that particular story with his classmates. The time does go fast.  That little boy is 21 and a junior in college now.  My Mom has been dead for 10 years.  Inconceivable.

We pass this way but once....savor the journey.

I can become a puddle so easily just in general life, it's best that I avoid things like this altogether. I was about in tears Sunday at lunch just asking my kids what they studied in Sunday school. They had read The Giving Tree and just hearing them talk about it got to me, and I haven't read that story in a few years.

Each of my boys (4 1/2 and 6) still ask for their "baby song" every night (ours are "In the Still of the Night" and "Dream a Little Dream").  They still love to cuddle and think I'm nuts when I tell them they may not always.  I know my days are numbered and I need to soak it all up while I still can  :)

I'd read it before and thought the little rhyme and message was super-sweet.  I started reading it to my kid and thought it was great, and then suddenly it got sort of creepy.  Like with the old woman driving across town, sneaking into her adult son's home, and rocking him at night while he's asleep.  Huh?  How's a kid supposed to process that?  "Daddy, does Grandma do that with you at night?"

Despite being creeped out by that part, it did seem so sweet and made me think about whether my little kids will really still be mine in the same way when they're all grown up.

...reading this diary!  I recently ran across an old video of the kids when they were babies.  I too was a slobbering, blubbering mess.  

Time does fly... much faster than it should!

Mother Goose rhymes with songs I made up myself! I have gotten new software to make podcasts and want to actually tape myself reading stories and singing. Not to be grim, but if something happened to me, these would mean a lot to my son. And if I hang around, he would still love to share them someday with his own kids.

I think he would like it if I recorded stories about when he was a baby - he likes to hear them on a regular basis - just little details about our trip to China to adopt him, things he did as a toddler, etc.

I have seen the book, but I didn't know there was a song.  

I don't know many songs.  How do you all learn them??