Someone Please Press Pause!

There are times when I look at my kids and can't believe how much they've grown and I'm excited about how big they are. But then I think about how they won't ever be this little again and it makes me sad. As hard as I try to recall how it felt holding Caleb as a little baby, or as often as I look at pictures of him then, I can't really remember it. I forget so quickly the little things that happen that make up our day-to-day life and I don't want to! I want to remember everything. Here are a few everyday snippets:

The way Caleb takes things from Leila and runs away and then she (slowly) crawls after him. She doesn't make it very far before he laps her. She turns her head to watch him coming from the other direction and laughs as he passes her. Then he laughs and they laugh again and again.

Sitting in the car going to the grocery store: Leila started making high-pitched squeals. Caleb imitated her and she'd repeat it and he'd imitate again. As I tried to get Caleb to not scream so loudly, I gave up as both children were laughing the deep belly laugh that I wish I could get on video. Pretty soon I was laughing along with them. Leila would scream, Caleb would scream and we all would laugh, all the way to the store, except for the moments punctuated with, "Mom, go fast!", "nother one bus", "two b-bus" (that's how he used to do the plural for busses), "woah, wot of dirt". 

Allen gets home from work, we're playing on the floor and he picks Leila up and wuzzles her neck. She hits/pats his cheek and he turns his head quickly over and over again and pretty soon they're both laughing so hard. 

Caleb missing Dad when he has to "go a work wong (long) time" and his excitement when Dad gets home. 

Leila finds the littlest things on our floor, picks them and up and puts them in her mouth with incredible speed. If I don't notice and she's been chewing a leaf for a while, she'll hold it out to show me and then laugh and shove it back in before I can grab it out of her hand. Then she laughs as I start to try to get it out of her mouth. 

*As I wrote that after the kids were in bed last night, I was crying to think they weren't going to be little forever. I woke up thinking, I sure am glad they won't be little forever. :) Caleb has been waking up earlier and earlier (again) and is so proud when he brings his diaper and wipes downstairs to our room to change his poopy bum at 4:30 am. His early wake-up calls and his occasional nightmares (last night at 2 am) make me tired, but more than that, they make him soo grumpy and disobedient and mean to Leila. And Leila's tired too because instead of going back to sleep after her 4 am feeding, she's woken up or kept up by Caleb. I ordered a clock on amazon today to help him know when it's time to get out of bed.