Ten years to build a ship

Having our minions quite close in age - any where from seventeen months to two & a half years apart, means that in several years time we will have a house full of teenagers all at once. I figured out that in the year 2024 we will have five teenagers - Ben will be nineteen years old & Will thirteen years old. Rianan, Jack & Blake all the ages in between, while Clay will be trialing along at ten years old. The age that Ben will be come October this year. 

Our first baby will be ten this year. Our last baby will be ten in 2024. It just doesn't seem right.

That is only ten years away. Yep, I said only. Ten years may seem like such a long way away yet, but I can remember when Ben was born back in 2004 - that was only ten years ago. If you ask me where the last ten years have gone I would have no precise answer. They have gone by so quickly. Is it because we have had five more children in that time it feels like it's all been a blur, a mash of memories that span ten years condensed into what feels like two. Or is it just 'life' these days? Everyone is getting busier & busier, the days are all merging into one long haze of time.

I wonder what our children will be like then. How chaotic will life be with so many teenagers. Will it be louder than it is now, or will they be so busy in their own lives that they are rarely home so it will be quieter than now.

I wonder who will give us the most grief, which one will finally turn Doug's hair gray. Who will keep me up at all hours of the night as I pace the floors, no longer due to an unsettled baby, but with an unsettled mind as I wait for them to come in the door. 

What will the dynamics be like between so many personalities. Ben & Rianan get along fabulously right now, will that still be the case when they are nineteen & seventeen. Jack gets a little lost in the mix at the moment, but will Ben & Jack find a more common ground together as they get older, or Jack forever be the pesky younger brother to Ben.

What mischief will they all get up to together, what will they cover up together or for one another, that Doug & I won't know about until many years down the track when we are all sitting around a meal together remincising. Then all of a sudden one of them will pipe up with "do you remember the time when....insert some crazy event here, where one helps to bail the other out of trouble & keep it quiet from Doug & I." 

Only to end with "We were so lucky Mum & Dad never found out." 

Maybe that will be the day I finally turn gray, when I discover so much more of what they got up to, that was kept quiet between the code of sibling secrecy. 

It's so easy now to get caught up in the toilet training, sight words & lexile readers, the guiding of appropriate & inappropriate language (see this post), the daily jobs chart, quiet afternoon time so little bodies can have a moment to rest, allowing small inches of freedom as they walk to a friends house down the road.

One day all this will be a distant memory & we'll be in the thick of teenage social lives, sports practice & weekend matches, after school jobs, homework assignments & end of year exams. 

Will I look back on this time & wish for it back because it all seemed so much easier. Maybe we'll be one of the lucky few who manage to get through the teenage years with little angst & family bonds intact. I know the hell I put my parents through for eighteen months before settling down & finding my feet in a new found independence. It kind of seems inevitable, like a right of parenthood passage that must be passed through - both the calm seas & the rough, stormy waves.

I hope that we are building our ship strong enough now, in these founding years, that it emerges on the other side, maybe a little worn but still afloat. At least for now, we still have a few more years to get the sails up & any leaky holes patched.

Time, I wish you would slow down a little.