Growing pains

He clambers onto my lap, all hard knees and pointy elbows, and tries to curl up. Failing that, he just hangs across my legs, feet dangling on one side, arms on the other. I try to accommodate him, my long-limbed boy, but he's just getting too big. I can't even cuddle him while reading anymore, he's so tall I can't see over his head to the page.

And then I see this:

And it makes me cry.

He's only been with me for 5-and-a-bit years. It feels like no time at all. In another blink he'll be 10, and then in another 15 ... and gone.

I know this is how it should be, I know he needs to grow and become a teenager and then an adult and in the process move out of my world and into his own.

But I will miss him.

And I hug my still little one even tighter, knowing I only have 12 months at most before he too stretches out of his sweet, pot-bellied toddlerhood into a gangly boy that first won't fit on my lap, and then won't want to, ever again.