Baby no more

Today my son made another change in life. He went from Toddler to preschooler. Today is his third birthday. :-)
I am grateful that he had such an enjoyable party that we threw for him the other day, however now I am realizing just how fast the kids do grow up.
He is already learning at a great rate. Fights with his sister to see who gets computer time first in the morning, now that makes a techno-geek proud.
Pretty soon he will be ready to start taking lessons with his sister at the family homeschool. Next thing you know they are both up and ready to run off to college and we'll be so very proud of them, but sad, wonder where all the time has gone. I was watching the new movie Cheaper By the Dozen with my wife yesterday morning and the movie made me cry. At the point when the father is struggling to work his dream job at his alma mater and fighting to keep the house running, it just hit me. Why do we push ourselves to work so hard for "success" when we are giving up the ability to live richly with our own children while they are growing up? Why is it that we judge our success by how much power or money that we have obtained in our lives by working such horrid hours under the most stressful conditions, all for the sake of making our children's lives better? It really made me sit down and think about the path I have been heading down at work. Right now, I am regarded as a top talent, asked to work on some of the most difficult projects that we have to work on, and I do it well. However, while I am working so hard, my kids are just growing up right under my nose and I am not sure that I want to keep working so hard just to wake up one morning and realize that my children are grown up and I don't really know who they are. I know that it's not a perfect world. In a truly perfect setting, I could work doing what I love to do, working only on the days that didn't interfere with family plans, not having to carry a pager and never having to worry about work after I am done for the day. Instead, I work very hard in hoping to be able to have one free weekend that I can just sit down and enjoy time with my wonderful kids. I try to find new ways to challenge them and keep them on their toes. They know how much I love them and that I work so very hard so that they will have opportunities to make their own mark on this world, as I try to do now. I am just realizing recently that I may have already started to make my mark on the world, by being a good parent and trying to teach my children how to be responsible citizens of the world. Teaching them how to love and care for one another and being open minded individuals who make their own choices and walk their own paths, this is one way to make a mark that people will remember. They will say, "those are wonderful kids, Corey has done a great job helping to raise them to be such good people..."