Growing, Growing Up, Leaving and Spreading Wings

It's amazing the twists and turns that life has for you. This last week or so I have been thinking about growing, growing up, leaving and spreading wings. That's because this week has been full of the realization that all of this starts at a very young age. As my previous post stated, Liam started first grade last week. That first day, SO much happened to keep pegging me with the thought that he is really growing up. He started full day school, started riding the bus and on top of that, he lost is first tooth on his first day of first grade!

Then my littlest, who isn't really little anymore even though he is only 7 1/2 weeks old, graduated from 0-3 month clothing to 3-6 month clothing and started smiling more than usual! So this one has been growing! We have a doctors appointment for his 8 week check up on Friday morning and I am anxious to find out just how big he is now. I just can't imagine how much he is going to weigh or how long he is.

After those two things, I started to get out of my denial stage about two of my brothers. My baby brother just left Monday for Japan. He will be there for a year. Yes, I know he will be coming home, but he's grown, growing up, leaving and spreading his wings. I am not his mother, but he has been my baby brother and I have not imagined him as anything other than that - even though he has been in college for 4 years and experienced so much. He wasn't a grown up to me and here he is packing his things and leaving the states to go live in another country by himself.

On to the second brother, my oldest. Him, his wife and their 4 kiddos are in the process of packing, selling and preparing to leave for Africa for an indeterminate amount of time to witness to the people over there about God and his amazing love! I can't imagine another family that would be better to do that then them; however, this means again that they are growing, growing up, leaving and spreading wings! Even more than that, my niece and nephews are still growing and growing up. I am SO going to miss them and interacting with them. Things won't really change between my brother, sister-in-law and I because we can talk and interact in other adult ways. But these are kids and I don't want to lose the relationship with them that I have. I don't want to stop being Auntie K to them. I love all of my nieces and nephews!

Josh, Liam, Austin and I spent the whole weekend at my parents house in order to enjoy as much time with Jimbo (only I am allowed to call him that!) as we could before he left Monday morning for a year. The whole day on Sunday was spent jumping on the trampoline, running around the yard, throwing balls around, riding the lawn mower, playing on skateboards and other outside riding toys, playing old videos on computers, reminiscing about old times and just enjoying the family. Several times I took my camera out to get pictures of the kids with Uncle Jimmy. I was hoping to get some pretty neat shots, especially when people were on the trampoline - smiles are always on faces when an adult is jumping on the trampoline with the kids.

We prepared to leave because Liam had school the next morning and Austin was going to get hungry. I told Liam he needed to give Uncle Jimmy a hug because he wasn't going to see him for a very long time. As I gave my baby brother a hug, the realization of just how long he was going to be gone and how much I love him really hit me. I grabbed the Austin and the diaper bag and said I needed to leave before I started crying. My mom looked at me and said she thinks I already was....it's true...I was. I waved goodbye and headed out the door.

I got on my computer a day or so later and started to move the pictures from my camera to my external harddrive and saw a pretty neat photo that describes exactly what each one of the people mentioned in this blog is doing, will be doing or has done. Going through the process of growing so they can grow up to leave and spread their wings to fly.