Lainie's 10th Birthday

Today Lainie turned 10.

I'm still wrapping my head around that, to be honest.

Not just that she is 10, but that I have a 10 year old.

It's a little crazy. I remember being 10 pretty clearly still. Which means Lainie is remembering everything that's happening now. Or most of it, anyway.

I hate how cliche it is to say that time flies, because it's so unbearably true.

It goes so fast, it's like there is an invisible hand somewhere, constantly pressing fast forward, but you can't feel it. You can't feel it until a moment is gone.

Until it's all over.

When Lainie was a baby, I remember thinking I would never get through her first year.

Her first year was so, so hard for me.

The lack of sleep, the sore, leaky boobs, the diapers, the crying, the impossibility of getting us into a routine, and all the while my postpartum hormones duking it out with my 16 year old girl hormones.

I didn't think it would ever end.

But then, it did. And once it did, I looked back and couldn't understand where the days went.

That year was the beginning of a constant sense of speed.

The years are flying by, and every time I think "this phase of her life/attitude/stubbornness is going to last forever and I will not survive it" I remember that first year, how hard it was, but how much I missed it when it was over, and how upset I was that it had gone so terribly fast.

I took the kids out this evening to my favorite shooting location in the valley, and did a little photo shoot just for Lainie. 

Of course I had to include Jack a little bit, lest he grow up to be that guy from the move Se7en, because didn't pay enough attention to him {seriously, these are the fears you have when you two kids, and no idea what you're doing}.

Lainie is growing up so fast, and into such a pretty young lady.

Every time I hit the shutter button and looked at the image on the LCD, my heart caught in my throat, and I felt a weird/sad mixture of "oh my God, how beautiful" and "NOOOOOOO!"

It's hard to explain, but if you have kids, I think you know.

The passing of time is such a happy, miserable thing.

Happy Birthday, Tiny.

You are loved, more than you will ever understand.