It’s 10 PM.

As I make my evening rounds to ensure kids are actually sleeping and not building tents, unrolling toilet paper or wreaking other general havoc, I kiss each babe on the cheek. Four stops and four sweet cheeks. Tranquility brings out the tenderness in each face and somehow erases the madness of the day. The tense moments forgotten with a glance of long eyelashes resting on full cheeks.

I go from room to room making my way from oldest to youngest. As I enter our baby’s room, I make out his shadowy figure through the darkness. He is asleep cross-ways on the bed. Legs so lean, looking nothing like the pudgy baby legs I once knew. Hair too long, left unkempt by a mother who refuses to chop the shag and make him look too grown too quickly.

While he is forever our baby, one more sunrise makes him four.

Four years old.

Three years old and you’re still considered a baby. Or at least a toddler. Four and you’re a kid. Meaning upon his birthday there will be no more babies in our home.

And that thought leads this dramatic mama to believe my kids might as well all move out and get jobs.

The thought has been coming like a slow moving freight train. No. More. Babies. I wait at the platform as the train pulls away, hauling off my baby and replacing him with a bigger guy.

For eleven years we’ve had someone toddling through our space. Now we’ve entered the independent, potty trained, strollers are unnecessary, I can do it myself phase.

I won’t say I don’t like this stage…..but I won’t say I don’t miss the years that led us here.

Ironic since there were so many nights I wished those moments away. I begged for restful nights. I prayed for the day we’d be diaperless and joked about the windfall that would result when we didn’t have to buy a mortgage’s worth of diapers each month. I swore up and down that I would never miss the tiny pieces and parts involved in putting a Dr. Brown’s bottle together.

I was wrong.

We have entered a new stage and I love watching the independence sprouting in each child. I love the ball games and academic activities that come with older kids. I love catching my oldest covering his smile when he picks up on some adult humor. Each stage brings fresh perspective and new joys.

But I remember thinking the weight of the tiny people stage would never end. And it does. So very quickly. You may know the adage the days are long but the years are short. I am feeling it more than ever as we are now closer to college than we are to birth with our oldest two children.

So, mamas, as you rock your fussy baby to sleep, please know it does end. The nights of colic and teething and gas. The neediness passes and is exchanged for preteens who sleep in and six year olds who wake up early and grab a book rather than wake you.

Mamas, the endless diapers will soon be replaced with dinosaur or princess undies. Which quickly turn into requests for a special type of boxer shorts befitting adolescent athletes. Diaper cream covered tushies will soon enough be a thing of the past. Rather than squeezing cute baby buns, you’ll beg your son not to moon his sister.

Baby food smothered faces and walls traded for kids with opinions on when and what they should eat. Helpful hands at the grocery. Even kids willing to make their own meals once in a while.

The transition takes time, I know. The last decade seemed like a lifetime………until I passed the finish line. Now in hindsight the span seems like a mere blink.

I won’t tell you not to wish it away because I remember the struggle. Regardless of wishing or not, it will pass. Whether you despise or covet, it slips away. Having this perspective with the fourth child made those long nights a little better and the stressful points a little easier. If this is your first go-around and you’re convinced the long nights and exhausting days will never end, take it from one mom who assures you they will.

I won’t ask you to be joyful when you roam the darkened halls with your fussy newborn tonight. But I know a mama who would trade you for just one more walk.