If you're busy, you might want to skip this one. You've read it before after all.

Right now, I'm trying to talk myself into doing my chores from yesterday. (Let's be honest, my iron is much too low to make this even a remote possibility.)

Instead, I keep pushing the refresh button on my blog, hoping that I've written something clever to read since the last time I looked at it.

(Do you find it endearingly charming or sadly pathetic that I find my own blog wildly entertaining?

Never mind.)

Last night, as David and I lay in the dark reviewing our day he asked, "Do you think all parents feel like this?"

I thought about it but didn't answer. I was busy counting.

Counting the years we've had with our boy, and the years we have left.

I was alarmed to see that the hourglass has flipped devastatingly in favor of the years we've already had. We're running out of time.

I asked David, slightly panicky, "Do you realize we only have 7 more family vacations together before he leaves. Including this one?"

And then we both whispered together, "We've got to make the most of it."

And neither of us said "Jinx" because it was such a sober moment.

After the candles and the presents and the story about the first time we met, I tucked my boy in and told him to stop growing up. He grinned at me, like we were sharing a joke.

Little does he know.

I couldn't have been more serious.

And if it weren't for the chocolate frosting smeared across his cheek, reminding me that he is, in many ways, still my little boy, my heart might have broken in two right then and there.

It was a very close call.