Poppy is 6 months old now and we have officially been living with a spica cast for 12 weeks. She gets her final cast off in just 2 weeks. I can hardly believe it. I can’t wait to snuggle her little body, give her a bath, take her for a swim, not stress about the weather, let her play in the sand…and the list goes on. She will have to wear a brace for some months afterward, but that’s a walk in the park compared to what we have been doing.

I got sad the other day thinking about how she is already 6 months old. Her “firsts” feel like “lasts” to me, knowing that my baby making years are over. And although I have held her obsessively and played with her constantly, I still feel as if the whole thing is flying by. The saying, “the days are long but the years are short” is really resonating with me lately.

Rather than just enjoy every moment, I (like all the rest of you) have to do life too. I have to feed people and clean stuff, answer hundreds of questions and break up hourly fights. I have to work on 50 million things and in the midst of it all, there’s this hip dysplasia junk. Some days I feel like it has slowed me down in a good way. It causes me to look into Poppy’s eyes and sing her songs longer than I might have if nothing was “wrong.” And other days it feels like it’s eating up my precious time. Worrying about it, driving to children’s hospital, replacing the moleskin on the cast edges.

I have been feeling nudged these past couple of weeks to stop waiting for this to be over before______ (fill in the blank.) Before we go to the beach, before we do fun things as a family, before we settle into a good routine, before I take a deep breath, etc. With so many things in life, it’s really tempting to wait until.

I hear it all the time. “I will travel after I get married.” “We will start a budget when our life calms down.”  “I will have that hard conversation after that event.” “We will buckle down with our discipline really soon.” “We will go to counseling when I’m ready.” “I will start taking care of myself eventually.”

The practical work of setting priorities, managing time and pacing ourselves can be overwhelming, especially with loud children and so much mail. But somehow it’s already 2016, I am 42 years old and my 10th wedding anniversary is in a couple months. My kids legs look so long and 2/3 of them are babies no more. Believe Steve Miller when he says, “Time keeps on slippin, slippin, slippin, into the future.”

So my word for the day is deliberate. Life done consciously and intentionally. Plenty of us side on the extremes- either hyper controlling our calendars and our every move OR living so reactionary that nothing we hope to do ever gets started. I think in both extremes, we look back and wish we had cultivated more special moments.

What are you waiting until?