Lately, I've been plagued by the realisation that life is passing too quickly. Weekends pass by in the blink of an eye, then another week is gone, then a term and now a whole school year. It doesn't feel possible that the summer holidays are almost upon us again.
My baby isn't a baby at all anymore. She is almost two years old, a fully fledged toddler with the attitude to prove it. She is desperate to race ahead through life, she isn't willing to slow down for even a millisecond. She watches the things her big sister can do and then demands that she be allowed to do them too. She refuses to sit on a toddler toilet seat now, instead, balancing precariously over the bowl as though she may disappear down the toilet any moment. She doesn't want to hold my hand to walk down the street, she wants to walk beside me independently as her sister does. In the mornings, when I try to do Ebony's for school, Ember barges in front of her and demands that I do hers first, as though the fact she has none is irrelevant.
And if I worry about how quickly Ember is growing up, she has nothing on her big sister. The past couple of years have flown by. When I think back to life before Ember, I remember nursery runs and lunchtimes at the breakfast bar and days out in Manchester. I remember Ebony's chubby cheeks and her hand gripped tightly in mine. That little girl feels like a distant memory now. This year, she has grown, taller and leaner, her limbs have thinned out and her face has lost the telltale chub of a little girl. She knows more now, she remembers things, and she chats away about all the things she has learned and played at school.
Sometimes, there are moments that feel perfect and I wish I could bottle them and keep them forever. Little snatches of time that I never want to forget. My two girls, little but growing as there are now, creating perfect memories that I know will one day escape me. I want to remember how it feels to be cuddled tightly by a toddler, or needed by a heartbroken six-year-old. I want to remember their huge excited smiles, their laughter, and the games they have played together in the garden this summer.
I wish I had a huge shelf of bottled memories that I could replay over and over again in my old age. When my little girls have grown and gone, I want to look back and inhale these moments over and over again. I want time to slow down that I can commit these days to memory. I want the summer to pass slowly, with plenty of time for exploring and adventure and just enjoying each other, and I want to remember this feeling of what life is like right now. It is easy to get caught up in the stress and the chaos and feel like this bit of life is hard, but I know that one day I will look back and long for the love and the warmth of this time of my life.
