I was surprised to unearth a wonderful little reminder in the March issue of Parents magazine. Parents is usually pretty mainstream, party line, and conventional for my taste, though I do really enjoy some of the recipes and party ideas as well as the $1 subscription renewal price I got this year. Anyway, in an article titled “Savor the Moments” by Harley Rotbart, he explains:

Alaina and my dad---*blink*--this moment, this "Saturday" is months old now already! (he looks like he's paying attention though 🙂

There are only 940 Saturdays between a child’s birth and her leaving for college. That may sound like a lot, but how many have you already used up? If your child is 5 years old, 260 Saturdays are gone. Poof!

Oh. My Goodness. FREAKS me out! That is nothing. A blur. A zoom. A blink. An amazingly swift transition. Somehow putting it in terms of Saturdays makes it feel very stark and swift.

Also included in the article is an oft-repeated remark  in some form or another in parenting circles: “Each day with young kids feels like a week, each week like a month. Yet as every birthday passes, the years seem to be streaking by at warp speed.”

I don’t actually quite agree with this one. Even with my first baby, I felt astounded at how fast the time flew by. Even with overwhelming early days, I was more amazed by how fast the day would pass without “getting anything done” and “without time” for a shower, rather than feel like the time was dragging or lasting a year. The speed of time as only increased with each baby and with each developmental milestone.