Enjoying the moment

Life Moments column
By Christine Bryant

I put my baby on a bus for the first time this past week.

She wasn’t going far – likely around a few neighborhoods, maybe a few busier streets.
It still felt momentous.

My 5-year-old is finishing up her preschool year this month, and in an effort to get the kids excited about the next big education milestone for them – moving on to kindergarten – her preschool arranged for a school bus driver to visit and take the kids on a short spin.

This, in addition to visiting the dentist that same morning and learning her permanent teeth soon would begin appearing, left me with that feeling you have when you wonder where time has gone.

How does time go by so quickly? One morning you wake up to your babbling baby and the next you’re sending her off to school.

As a mom of two, some days (let’s be honest, many days), my goal is to just get through daylight until the sun goes down and it’s time for bed.

It can be difficult to “stop and smell the roses” when food is flying through the air and high-pitched screaming is beginning to attract wild animals. Add in a few pets, and our house can feel like a zoo at times.

Some days I don’t want to smell the roses – I just want to water them and get to bed.

But many days I try to remind myself to stop and enjoy the moment – and not only those moments you know you won’t get back, like the firsts – first smiles, first steps, first words, first day of school.

In addition to those, I try to remind myself to enjoy those moments you know will happen again – the trips to the park, the nightly dinners, bedtime stories.

It makes the sibling bickering, the constant barrage of dirty diapers and the endless “Are we there yet?” type questions more manageable. It also slows down time – if not for just a few minutes.

Isn’t time the most precious gift we have?

Christine Bryant is a Messenger staff writer and columnist.