Today my little man turns four.  I’m about to burst into tears just typing that.  I’m not whatcha call super-sentimental, either.

I looked back through a few photos to show you, and it is completely befuddling to me how on earth little Finny is still alive.  I think about how I felt four years ago, and it is laughable how unprepared we were.  We had no idea what we were doing.  We were such different people – namely we were actual people – and now we are full-fledged parents.  (I love these children to death, but I do miss being a person many times a day.)

I think back on how worried I was about so many insignificant things; if he was crawling soon enough, when was he going to walk?  I had him enrolled in speech therapy at the local children’s hospital at the age of eighteen months…  We had just moved to Ohio at that point and had not gotten a new pediatrician.  He ended up attending exactly zero sessions; there was absolutely nothing wrong with him – when we did get a pediatrician a few weeks later, he told me Finn was perfectly normal.  His only problem was that he had an anxious, impatient mother.

Of course you always know that your children are growing up.  But then you scroll through the thousands of images you so carefully recorded for posterity – every little milestone, in infinite minutia, and you notice how quickly the time passes.  When they reach one of those milestones, my heart aches with the loss of their little-ness and races at the thought of what lies ahead.  The first time I realized the speed of this forward motion was at the whiff of Finny’s tush after he started eating solid food.  Never before had I thought I might miss the smell of newborn-mustard poop, even if it was only because I prefered it over the stuff made of carrots and green beans.

Everything revolves around bodily fluids for me.

Now he is four; a little over a year away from kindergarten and I mourn the loss of his tiny-ness.  Even if he did drive me bat-shit insane.  And still does.  Before Nathan and I had Finn, I made him promise that no matter how much we loved our kids, we would always love each other MORE.

I have a feeling neither one of us anticipated just how deep the little ones burrow into your heart.

Happy Birthday to you, my sweet little man.