For just a brief moment...........

Allyson had to dress up as a movie acress for the wax museum they had at school this week.

The morning of her debut, I asked her if she would like me to find a pair of 'bling bling' clip on earrings to make her more glamorous.

I knew I had a pair, buried deep in my jewelry box, that belonged to her great grandma pearl.

But it wasn't until I clipped them onto her ears that I remembered a photo- that I swear I just took last weekend- that is in my dining room..... A picture of the exact same little girl, wearing the exact same earrings.

And it made me cry.

Because she is growing, changing and maturing- right before my very eyes- and I simply can not wrap my brain around that. How fast she is changing. How every single day things seem so different, yet so much the same.

And in just an instant, like that (said while snapping my fingers), she will be a woman. So fast. So quickly.

And then I looked down and saw this sweet little bruised up child, the one I gave birth to just a breath ago, asking if she could wear those earrings.

I clipped them onto her sweet little head and ran to get my camera so that I could snap a glimpse of her as the sweet child she still is. But I knew I had to hurry, because she too is changing so very fast.

There is not a saying, book, bit of advise or story that could possibly prepare you for what it is like to raise children. There just isn't. You have to learn it as it engrains itself onto your heart.

That, my friends, is why older women just smile when they see a first time mother cradling her pregnant belly. Because they know.

They know.