The View From September

September has brought busy-ness!  School, soccer and snuggles (September alliteration).

 Special snuggles with numbers 2 & 4.

 The kids have been excited to come home from the school library with chapter books.  The first few weeks of school they would run home, plop down on the couch and read their lives away.  The teacher in my was singing and dancing for joy.  The tired-up-all-night Mommy in me was sagging on the couch.

 The squidgy stage has arrived--hair loss, peeling skin, pimples and multiple chins.

 Henry got to meet one of his Great Grandmas--look at him gazing into her eyes.

 That sure seems like a lot of kids in that picture, doesn't it?

 Nora took charge of the camera.  She got a lovely picture of her Mommy....

 and a family shot of the rest of us.  The pictures might turn out better if she could stop shaking the camera as hard as she can each time she pushes the button.

 Look at that little face!  Oh--I want to squish it.

 Isn't that a healthy breakfast in the background?  I bought it myself at Costco.

 Now Caroline has taken over the camera for a photo shoot with Nora.

 When the kids are gone to school, the Big Sister helps Mommy take care of the Baby Brother.

 Our second set of boy and girl.  I had so many pictures of Ezra and Caroline all alone when it was just the two of them--now it's Henry and  Nora's turn.

 Sometimes we have friends over so that Mommy can sit on the couch and chat with an adult and so that Nora can give her friends hair cuts.  Don't worry--no real scissors were used.  Phew!

The other day as I was walking through the parking lot to pick up my children, a mother looked out of her open window and whispered to me "Time flies".  Two words.  A cliche.  And yet, so much more.  I nodded, kissed my boy's soft, fuzzy head and said "It does!"  She has been watching me walk  by her car every day for the past month and in that time Henry has grown by leaps and bounds.  She was really saying "Time is cruel!".  It never stops, never slows, never reminds us to take a breath and feel each moment.  Hurry, hurry, hurry, life shouts at us.  All the while these little beings are anxious to put on pounds, gain inches, grow teeth, lose teeth, learn to read, make new friends, stop needing Mommy quite so much.  Time is cruel.  But God is good.  So good.  He reminds us that while these Gifts are ours for the short duration of time, they are His for all eternity.  It is only our job to show them the way to Him in the short time they live in our arms.  And pray, with all our heart and soul that they will accept Him and walk in that way.  That they will embrace eternity with their Saviour.  And then someday the cruelty of time will cease to exist.