My third child turned 18 today. All grown up. In four more years, I will have completed all of my motherly obligations. I’ve changed at least 5000 diapers, baked 77 birthday cakes (not that I’m counting), and kissed away more tears than I could ever count. I’ve sat in the stands of countless sporting events, plays, and school concerts.

I’ve learned the proper way to tie a necktie and I’ve protected each of them from harm. (Just try to get to them…I dare you.) I’ve helped them write English papers and taught them to do their own laundry. I’ve even taught a few of them to drive –

But today, as my son turns 18, I feel like time is going far too fast. I know it’s so cliche, but when you wake up and your baby is 18, it does make you wonder where the time has gone. I still remember, as though it were yesterday, how tiny he looked in the bassinet. He looked so new.

It seems like just yesterday that he learned to walk and talk.  How is it possible that he’s driving a car, growing a beard, and going off to college?

My husband used to say to the kids, whenever they grew an inch or had a birthday, “I thought I told you to stop growing up so fast!” Well, you know kids…they never listen, so Nick, like the rest of them, went on and grew up fast.

I’m looking forward to hanging out with grown up Nick. I think he’ll be pretty awesome. Good genes.

You can read more of Gwen’s writing by visiting her blog – a life less ordinary.

Most times I feel that raising my family is the most difficult thing in the world. It consumes me. It’s all uphill. I constantly question if I am doing ‘it’ right. I’ve always felt that I needed to fully apply myself in the art of raising a family.

Art is most often a difficult process, it can be messy, it can make you frustrated and the end result has varied opinions in the eyes of the beholder. But if the artist is pleased with their creation, then that is all that matters.

If you ask me if I am pleased with my creation, my family, I will tell you that it’s a little messy right now but I’m not finished yet. If you ask me when I’ll be finished, I will tell you that I have no idea. If you ask me if I had some pleasure along the way, I will tell you this:

When I look back on the years leading up to now, I see smiles, laughter, adventures and love. I see the struggles but I see love. I see that each one of us have had failures and successes and we have pulled together for comfort or celebration. I see that my children have raised me up as much as I have raised them. I see that the art of raising a family is painted with irregular strokes of the brush, written with typos, sculpted with inconsistencies, photographed with a unique angle of view but crafted with love.

At the end of the day I may feel like a tormented artist resisting sleep because there is still work to do. But I am certain that my work will not be finished until my whole family can look back with me and see the beauty of our masterpiece, with love.

“Family life is full of major and minor crises – the ups and downs of health, success and failure in career, marriage, and divorce – and all kinds of characters. It is tied to places and events and histories. With all of these felt details, life etches itself into memory and personality. It’s difficult to imagine anything more nourishing to the soul.” ~ Thomas Moore

Be sure to visit Kimberly’s blog!

Raising our family, my husband and I were able to gather all 4 kids around the kitchen table most evenings for a sit-down family dinner. We rarely zipped through fast food lanes, or ate dinner in front of the TV. With four busy kids, our calendars were full, but somehow, miraculously, 9 times out of 10, we shared an evening meal together. Everyone talked over each other as bowls were passed and countless glasses of milk were spilled. With four unique children (oh, how they are different!), with four very distinct likes and dislikes, there was plenty of grumbling around the table about the menu of the day. It was loud and chaotic. And at the time I had no idea how much I would miss it.

This past weekend, my son Dylan spent the night at a friend’s house – twice. My 17-year-old son Nick spent the weekend working or with friends – out of the house. It was a quiet weekend. And it hit me last night, when my husband asked “Are we eating at the table or in front of the TV again?” that I was really missing our family dinners. Busy work schedules and filled social calendars are keeping my two boys away from the dinner table.

But honestly, it’s much more than that. I’m missing the ordinary days. More than 20 years of ordinary moments that have created this family. I’ve been thinking a lot, lately, about my growing children, and the inevitability that one day soon my house will be empty of backpacks, stinky gym clothes, and clanging video games. It’s with mixed emotion that I think of the day when all will be quiet in the Morrison house. I’ve done this parenting thing a while, so I’m entitled to sigh just a little at the thought.

Somewhere between colicky babies and ornery teenagers, there were a lot of ordinary moments. Ordinary moments times four children. And I only wish I could remember them all. Rewind to a moment in time and replay it again. Sure, we took pictures duing school plays, baseball games and basketball championships, prom nights, and graduations — but it’s the ordinary moments, the child crawling into your bed at night because he had another bad dream, those are the memories I don’t have captured in an album. And there have been so many.

Need more Gwen? Check out her blog!

Opened October 23, 2009 | Runtime:1 hr. 30 min.
PG-13: language, sexual references and a brief drug comment

Motherhood is a slice of life movie. It chronicles a day in the life of Eliza Welch (played by Uma Thurman), a stay-at-home mother of two and writer of the mommy-blog “The Bjorn Identity” (why didn’t I think of that?!) It starts with Eliza waking in the still dark morning, shuffling out of bed, checking on her still sleeping children, snapping a picture of her daughter, making a cup of coffee, and sitting down in her office to write her blog. Hmm… I don’t know about you, but switch out the coffee for tea (and “office” for my bed) and that describes my morning to a T.

In fact, I did identify with a lot of Eliza’s day. The crazy, hectic mornings, annoying people in line at the store and trying to find two minutes to string together a complex sentence. The feelings of having lost your “real” identity to that of wife and mother, and wondering if you’ll ever again find that woman you once were. Since I am currently in the middle of literally that exact same struggle, this movie hit closer to home for me than I was expecting.

What I didn’t identify with is that Uma Thurman on her worst day is looking 10 times better than me on my best. I know they tried really hard to “ugly” her up, but underneath the hair and glasses, she’s still Uma. And on the close-ups, it REALLY bugged me to see this perfect makeup job. I’m sorry, but harried mom who doesn’t even have time to run a brush through her hair does NOT have perfect makeup. Take note, movie makers!! I’m lucky to get some concealer and mascara applied! In fact, a great scenario would have been to have Uma interrupted and end up going through her day with mascara on only one eye. Not that that’s ever happened to me!

But aside from Uma’s great beauty (and my own insecurities) I found this movie wonderfully validating. Rare is the movie that comes from the mom’s point of view. Usually, she’s the supporting character in someone else’s life. And don’t we all feel like that, at least on occasion? It’s listed as a comedy, though I think it’s more accurately described as REALITY. My reality, when I look at it from the outside, is pretty comical. Which is what I try to capture in my own mommy blog.

I’m going to take a moment and address the issue of kids’ names, because several scenes make mention of it. There’s a scene where Eliza is accused of giving her daughter, Clara, an Edna-name “you named her after your favorite grandmother, didn’t you?” If I remember correctly, her response is “shut up!” There’s another scene where a mom is on the phone with her daycare, telling them she’s going to be late picking up her twins “Skye and Banjo” – and of course, the audience broke out laughing here. Because that’s ridiculous, right, who names their son Banjo?! But is Skye really in the same realm as Banjo? I’ve heard it referred to as one of those “hippie” names like Rain and River, but I never thought of it as such? So, what’s the consensus? Is Skye one of those weird, out there names like Rumor and Apple? Or is it just unusual and uncommon? Like, say Tad.

My overall review: I really liked it. Maybe it was just seeing myself on screen (a taller, thinner version of me) but I enjoyed seeing a mom who was a person and not just a supporting caricature in someone else’s more interesting (read: important) life.

Motherhood movie website