Have you people heard of the website Pinterest?  According to the 'about us' page, "Pinterest lets you organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes and organize their favorite recipes."

Pinterest is like crack for someone like me, and by me I mean someone with ADHD and has the attention span of a flea and is distracted by shiny objects on a regular basis. I have found at least 300 different bathrooms I'd like to be in my house, dresses I want to own, DIY projects I must try, recipes and tons of amazing stuff for kids. 

Waiting for a work project to import the other night I fell down the Pinterest rabbit hole and found myself exploring other peoples boards on things to make and do with your kids. Looking at projects people have undertaken with their children, I was struck with a few immediate thoughts: 1. I never do stuff like this with my kids, even though it looks fun. 2. These people obviously have full time live-in help to clean up after their elaborate projects, and do other trivial things like make dinner and pay bills. 3. How do real people find the time to do all this?

My son is a 'grader' now as he calls it. My daughter is in 7th grade - halfway through middle school - gulp! The tiny babies I once carted around in my Baby Bjorn are now both concerned with hair care products and grumbling about homework. Yes, both of them - my first grader has asked if he could be allowed to buy hair gel with his allowance. Not only that, but when he asked if he would have homework now that he is a grader on the first morning of the school year, he turned around and walked back up the front steps to our home grumbling "Forget this. I'm going back to bed," when I told him he would.

Thankfully my son is still small enough to hold, but he's quickly moving out of that realm, he asks me to carry him sometime, but now doesn't want me to kiss him goodbye in front of his friends. My daughter has aged out of American Girl dolls and is now into Cover Girl. And looking at these Pinterest boards I realize how much time has not been spent on creating these moments with my kids. Not just for them but for me.  Damn you Internet with your gorgeous photos of people being much better parents than me, making backyard tee-pees and elaborate murals and other fun stuff old-stick-in-the-mud-me never does!

My neighbor has a new baby granddaughter. The kids and I went across the street to meet her, and give our congratulations to the new grandma and mama. Looking at this wee girl I was struck with an overwhelming desire. 

"This is weird, but can I smell her?" I asked her mom. My kids looked at me like I was insane but mom and grandma both nodded and smiled. I gently buried my face in her neck and took a deep breath.  In that moment I was transported back to a time when my kids were newborns, and had that brand new baby smell. I swear they should find a way to bottle that smell, it's like olfactory valium. Back then it was simpler and harder. Simpler because they were babies, and far more portable, they were with you everywhere-harder obviously because they were incapable of doing anything for themselves except waking up at all hours of the night. I could always bury my face in their necks and breathe in their sweet milky scent and know that everything would be okay. 

"Mom, why did you smell the baby?" my son asked as we walked home.  "Because babies smell really good bud, and it reminds me of when you and your sister were babies," I explained. 

"Oh," he said, "I thought you were smelling to see if she pooped."  Leave it to a six-year-old to bring it all back to poop.  

When we got home my kids asked if I would jump on the trampoline with them. Fresh off smelling a newborn and giving her mom the tired old, but true cliched advice, "enjoy this time, it really does go by too fast", I decided to take my own advice. We jumped together.  It wasn't a beautiful ethereal photo moment from a Pinterest photo per se, but it was a step toward carving time out to make memories for my kids and I to hold onto. And hopefully, the more I just decide to jump off the treadmill that is day-to-day life for a moment with them, the easier it will become to figure out how to do it. Because right here's where the struggle lies; carving out time to make time.