A proposal on Mother's Day

Sigh. I knew it would come someday. I just didn't think it would be this soon. The funny thing is that I was actually wondering the other day when the kids might begin to wake up to the opposite sex. Harry, at 5 1/2, announced today after church that he wanted to marry "that girl with the pretty dress" when he grows up. As our church has all of five kids, we were trying to figure out who he meant, then realized it was one of several new kids who came this week. Avery. She's nine or so. Harry says he told her that he wanted to marry her when he grew up and she said, "That would be nice." We supported him in his choice of a sweet (and apparently well-dressed) spouse. But boy, is it going to be hard to watch him continue his outward trajectory, after these seemingly forever years of utter focus on us. We aren't the whole world to him any more. And that's a good thing, I know. But it still aches to let that time go, as overwhelming as it seemed so often...