It is the littlest of things that sneak up, grab me and squeeze my heart just a little too hard.

Like the girls coming down from the shower all squeaky-clean the other night and climbing on the sofa with me. They still shower together mostly for ease and efficiency, but I am no longer needed for the “is all the shampoo out of my hair” check, they (most of the time) happily check each other for leftover soap. But the showering and getting ready on their own bit of independence has been coming for quite awhile now – that wasn’t the little thing that sent me reeling. This was…

Addie says to me, “Look Mama – we cut our all of our toenails and even our fingernails. All by ourselfs.” (Yes…she did say ‘ourselfs’ instead of ourselves. Cuteness that I know I should be correcting, but just can’t for a little while longer.)

Now, mind you, I didn’t relish the chore of cutting their nails, clearly not a job that was top ‘o the list for me. But the fact that they don’t need me to do it anymore? That was just one of those little things.

Those little things that remind me just how fleeting that time is when we have the girls all to “ourselfs.”