In the three short months since starting kindergarten, my oldest son, Mike, has grown almost 4 inches, gained almost 10 pounds, and outgrown clothes that just two months ago I was certain would never fit him.

Pants that enveloped his feet in September now show off the tops of his flashy white athletic socks. Shirts that he could disappear in now tightly hug his chest.

Suddenly, he’s almost shoulder height on me and nobody has ever accused me of being short — unless you count comments from my almost 7-foot-tall husband. When Mike crawled into my lap the other day, it felt as if someone had dropped a defensive tackle there instead of one of my beautiful little boys.

“You’re crushing me!” I said to him, sounding more like his little brother than his mom. “I can’t move!”

This gave me pause and made me wonder: had Mike curled up on my lap for the last time? Are his baby days really over?

After all, he’s only going to get bigger and God willing, my lap will not. But still, I honestly couldn’t remember the last time Mike sat on my lap. Did this milestone pass unnoticed? Did I hurry him off my lap one night after story time so I could get on with my life after I put him to bed and then that was it?

Suddenly, I wanted a do-over. I wanted Mike, with his long and gangly arms and legs, to curl up on my lap one more time so I could lock the moment into my mind and keep it there forever, treasured and secure.

But by that point, Mike had moved onto the next thing, which is exactly how our lives have been going lately. Mike moves serenely through his days, learning, growing and changing, while I desperately cling to yesterday, clamoring for lost moments — moments I didn’t fully appreciate while I was in them and that will never come around again.

Take, for instance, holding my sons when they were little babies. I loved to hold them and so that’s what I did — I held them, especially Mike, constantly. I held him while I ate, showered, slept, talked on the phone, even while I typed.

I even remember worrying that I held him too much, that he would grow up permanently attached to my leg — at least until he went off to Harvard.

Can you imagine a more ridiculous thing to worry about? Is it even possible to hold a baby too much? Because now, just a few short years later, holding my baby boy takes some serious coordination of those long, gangly arms and legs and carrying him is simply out of the question.

And I miss the days when Mike would fall asleep in my arms with his face mashed into my chest, his eyes half-open, and his sweet, milky breath perfuming the air. I can’t even remember the last time I held him as he slept; that amazing moment slipped by, somehow unnoticed, unmarked. When did this daily occurrence become a memory?

Now that Mike is getting older, I realize how the closeness parents share with their small children — physical and emotional — is fleeting. Since Mike has started school and is away from me for most of the day, his life is becoming more his own.

His school life is like murky water to me; I just don’t know much about what he does there. And Mike, who normally prattles on and on about anything and everything, has lately been telling me that things are a secret, that he’s not telling, that he doesn’t feel like talking about something. Gone are his preschool days when Mike would provide me with a minute-by-minute recap of his entire day, agonizing over little details until even I was thinking, “OK OK. Enough already!”

There’s no question that Mike is growing bigger, older and becoming more of his own person. But he sometimes looks so little and lost when I leave him at school in the morning — a small body among throngs of others on the playground — that my heart breaks into a million pieces as I walk away from him, my precious little boy.

But then there are so many other times when I think that I have doomed myself to a life of brushing the molars of fidgeting children, assisting with the development of yet another refrain to the Diarrhea Song, and cutting crusts from sandwiches. Sometimes I just think that my kids will be the only two children in the world to never, ever grow up.

But then I force myself to pause and realize: they are growing up, quickly, right before my very eyes. So I try not to rush through everything — the songs, the stories, the baths, the mealtimes, and all of those moments in between — just so I can get to the next thing.

 Because the next thing always comes, often before I’m ready for it, before I’m ready for the last time of something, seemingly small, seemingly insignificant, to slip by, unnoticed.

Sara Groves is a weekly columnist for the Independent Record. Check out her blog online in the “Opinion” menu at

helenair.com.