This morning my oldest son was putting his lunch inside his backpack, getting ready to leave for the bus stop. "OH YEAH!" he calls out. "I need a picture of me from kindergarten!"
Not a problem I think to myself. Might actually be fun to reminisce about the old days and when my boy was a sweet boy back in his first year of school. Oh okay ... so you caught me. He wasn't exactly a sweet boy back then. But he is now. Sometimes.
Anyway, I continued doing what I was doing ... probably looking at facebook or something similar ... and calmly asked, "Okay. When do you need it?"
There could only be one response to this question coming from an eleven year old boy. "Today." he said flatly.
"TODAY? TODAY? You have to leave for the bus in like 3 minutes. What the heck, Jake?" I screamed jumping out of my chair and heading to my drawer where I keep my picture disks.
Normally I'm always jumping all over myself because things are not organized exactly how I would like them around here ... but today I decided to let up on myself a little. I am more together than what I give myself credit for.
Yeah. I'm bragging on myself. Why? I rarely get the chance to.
That, and because in 3 minutes time I was able to find his kindergarten school photo, print it, and have it tucked safely away in his backpack with time to spare as the bus rolled up to retrieve him. I pulled it off.
And ... I even allowed myself 20 seconds of that time to reflect back to those days when that first school photo was taken. The days when cuddling with Mom reading a book was way more fun than running off to a friends house. The days when he was small enough to place him in time out ... and be able to force him to stay there. The days when all the magical things of childhood were believed and treasured, rather than him being the one enjoying the twinkle in his sister's eyes when these things happen. I was able to think back to all these things.
Ya know, before I had to start screaming at the girls that "WE WERE LATE!" and needed to get their hair brushed and their bottoms in the car like ... NOW!
And Now ...
