Those Sweet Moments

This morning, while everyone else was still asleep, I got to snuggle with little James while the warm morning sun streamed through our front windows and Mozart played in the background.


Saturday we cut down trees and chopped wood for the winter ahead. It was refreshing working as a family (well, James was napping for most of the time) and becoming more self-sufficient.

Friday evening was crisp and cool, but still sunny out. We walked down to the park to play a game of family kick ball that turned into chasing Daniel, somersaults, and rolling in the soft green grass. It felt so good to smell the grass because I was rolling around in it. After we walked to the grocery store to buy popcorn...and that is what we ate for dinner.

“The biggest mistake I made [as a parent] is the one that most of us make. . . . I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of [my three children] sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages six, four, and one. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night. I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less”(Anna Quindlen, Loud and Clear [2004], 10–11).

I think I'm getting it.