Too Fast

Twice a year I do a deep cleaning in Micah's room. Usually once in January and again in the summer. The other times in between Micah is in charge of cleaning his own room. GASP! During this time I get rid of all the little happy meal toys lying around, and become convicted on how often we eat at fast food places. I sort through all of his toys/clothing and decide what to keep, what to recycle and what to trash. Another thing I do is sort through all of Micah's schoolwork and make a binder for each school year. I'm a bit behind, as I realized this week that I only got through half of second grade and still have all of third grade to organize and put together. Some of you might be thinking, "Why in the world do you save all that stuff?" I guess it might be because I don't scrapbook or journal. This is my way of preserving memories from his childhood. What I like the most about saving some of Micah's school work is that they are HIS memories. I love to go back and read his journal entries from each year, to see what his little mind was thinking at age 5, 6, 7.... To see his progression in math, handwriting, creative writing, art, etc.

On Wednesday, as I was 'cleaning' Micah's room I ended up spending the entire 3 hours that Amanda was napping reading through ALL of Micah's work that I have saved. Yep, four years worth. I laughed. I cried. I spent several minutes on his Kindergarten work, trying to decode his spelling errors. :0) Looking through his art work and finding little pieces of his heart along the way. Best three hours I've wasted all year.

Yesterday, I actually got a lot of work done by sorting through all his school work, toys and started on the clothing. While going through his clothes I was forced to recognize once again my son is growing up. OK, this might sound completely lame to some of you, but in all honesty it broke my heart. For the last year or so we've been having Micah hang and fold all of his own laundry. GASP! I know we're such mean parents teaching our son responsibility. Possibly once he's older he'll blog about how we made him do chores at the age of nine.

Anyways, back to Micah's clothes. To my surprise the majority of his shirts were on the floor in his closet. My first thought was, 'He's not hanging them up, but throwing them on the closet floor.' I began picking them up and hanging up the shirts one by one. Soon each shirt began to slip off the hanger and fall to the floor. It then dawned on me that he's not throwing them on the floor... His shirts no longer fit on the baby/kid size hangers!!! This revelation brought me to tears once again. To come to terms that my boy needs regular/ADULT size hangers for his clothes!

It's amazing how fast these past 9 3/4 years have flown by. When Micah was a baby doing nothing else but eat, sleep and poop, we couldn't wait for him to do more. To crawl... Then walk... Then talk... Start pre-school... Start sports... Start elementary school. So many things that we as parents couldn't wait for him to do. Now we seem to want things to slow down. What lies ahead, we are not all that excited to dive headfirst in. I feel like this next stage of life for Micah and for us as parents, is a lot more complex.

A this point of parenting Soowan and I are starting to feel vulnerable. Our confidence in parenting is quickly diminishing. Not that we've done everything right for the past 9+ years, but there was a lot less to battle with then. What lies in the present and the near future is quite mind boggling. We're not sure how to navigate through it all. See... Neither one of us were raised in a Christian home. We both became Christians in our late teens/early twenties. We feel like we know A LOT about what NOT to do from our own upbringings, but feel like we need to do more than the exact opposite of what our parents did (although it's not a bad place to start).

I might be over analyzing everything too soon, but it's on my mind and on my heart. I know there is still a lot of 'kid' left in him... but for how much longer? Kids are growing up so fast these days, and when I look back at my own childhood I 'knew' way more than Micah does at this age. Where's the happy medium? Where's the line between where you're not sheltering your child, but then not throwing them into the abyss with no life jacket on? I know there is no such line, but wishing there were.

OK, enough pondering and whining on my part. Here are a few snapshots of Micah's journal/creative writing entries and artwork I have saved. In my opinion, they are PRICELESS.