Olives - a true benchmark

Some of my greatest joys and sorrows as a mom are days when something happens and I realize (really realize) my boys are growing up. Not that I don't want them to grow up. I get a lot of joy watching their progress and seeing them take their "next step," but it's often bittersweet.

Take olives, for example . . .

From the time they were first sitting up at the dinner table, both of my boys would put an olive on every single finger to eat them off, plucking them one finger at a time. I loved doing it as a kid and make sure we have plenty of olives so they can do it time and again. Somewhere along the line Ryan, my oldest, stopped doing it. But I didn't pay all that much attention because Sean was still happily topping his little fingers with olives, and then biting them off, one finger at a time.

A couple nights ago he started to put them on his fingers. But when he got to his thumb, oh no . . . the olive didn't fit. Instead, it broke right open as he tried to push it on. He was amused. And I was sad. Ugh. It was a sad mommy moment. My boys thought it was silly that I was sad. But I knew that moms and dads everywhere knew the feeling I was experiencing, and would experience multiple times throughout the years. I know that when I serve olives, they'll continue to stuff them on the fingers, oblivious to the fact that they break open -- and I'll remember the night when his little thumb broke through because he was no longer my tiny little boy with tiny little fingers.