It's a bright and sunny day, and I'm in the office, doing something on the computer, when Evie runs in from outside, fist full of a big, bright, boldly yellow dandelion.

(Dandelions and daisies, just like crayon art, are items that I find myself inundated with as the mother of three girls)

"Here, Mama!" she says cheerfully. "This flower is for you to put in some water."

"Thanks, sweetie," I say. "That's a really nice flower."

 I give it an obligatory sniff, then set it down on my desk next to a stack of papers. And I turn back to my computer.

Unfortunately, Evie seems to have been born with a built-in BS detector. She does not turn away. She stares back, and her clear, beautiful blue eyes see straight through me.

"I gave it to you for you to put in SOME WATER," she repeats. "So it will stay tall."

(Evie is not about to let her gift be doomed to an unnoticed death, wrinkling away to a faded shadow in the clutter on my desk. )

I am chastened, and finally I turn away from the computer. "Okay, sweetie," I say. "I'll put your flower in some water."

And I do.

I put it in some water, and it does stay tall.

The other day my daughter jumped up on top of a stool in the middle of the living room, pulled her sister up there with her, and then began singing at the top of her lungs. "We are pop stars! Pop stars on Facebook! We are pop star siiiiiiisters!"

And then flashed a giant, triumphant smile, certain that all the world was watching her.

This, friends, was out of the mouth of my 3-year-old.

When my oldest daughter was 3, she was obsessed with Winnie-the-Pooh, Elmo, and Curious George.

My youngest daughter, at 3, likes to watch Phineas and Ferb, and isn't even sure of all the "Sesame Street" characters' names.

When my oldest was 3, we sang "Baa, Baa, Black Sheep" every time we went on a car ride.

Now that my youngest is 3, she enjoys singing along with the latest songs on the radio.

The fact is, our household just isn't a baby-skewed household anymore. And I worry that my youngest is growing up too fast because of it.

My little teenage...I mean 3-year-old...pop star.

I remember once, when my oldest was at preschool age, visiting at a friend's house. My friend was also babysitting another little girl who was about 4 years old. This little girl, whom I'd never met before, had a "High School Musical" backpack, which I found surprising. "Did she pick out that backpack?" I asked. "She loves High School Musical," my friend informed me. "It's her favorite movie." I must have looked surprised, because my friend added, in an explanatory way: "She's the youngest. She has two older siblings."

And oh, how I silently I judged that other mother. Why in the world would a 4-year-old be watching a show about teenagers? I thought. Isn't that a little inappropriate for her age? I mentally compared her to my own 4-year-old daughter, with her little pink fairy princess backpack. Preschoolers shouldn't even know who pop stars are, I thought.

Flash forward four years, and I get it. I completely get it.

When you have three siblings and only one Saturday morning in which to watch cartoons, one radio on which to play songs, one movie to watch on a Friday night, you're going to have to make some choices. Some compromises. And, more often than not, the older sibling's taste affects what the younger siblings listen to.

For instance, on a long car ride a few weeks ago, I brought along a bunch of the kids' CDs and let each girl take turns picking out music to listen to. Beth picked the "Phineas and Ferb" soundtrack CD. Lucy picked out the "Tangled" soundtrack CD. And then Evie picked a CD of kids' Bible songs. It is, admittedly, quite a juvenile collection, with a sweet-voiced children's choir singing a series of sweet little Sunday School songs. It was a perfectly appropriate choice for a 3-year-old...but my second grader wasn't very interested. "Um...Evie, that's not really a very rockin' CD," were her words. I quickly reminded her that they'd each had a turn, and that Evie could pick any CD she wanted, and that when she herself was 3 she had loved this CD. And so we listened to it.

But, I haven't heard Evie listen to it or request that CD since. The power of an older sibling's suggestion.

I'm not sure what to do about it. There's nothing at all wrong with the grade-school-age shows my oldest daughter likes to watch, nothing on them that I think is inappropriate or bad. I get a kick out of "Phineas and Ferb," and "The Last Airbender" is a great show too. They're  just...older. I'm not going to forbid my oldest daughter from watching them, and there's no way in the world I'm going to be able to keep my youngest daughter from looking up to and imitating her older sister.

And as a result, my 3-year-old is now bopping around the house singing songs from the "Just Dance" game on the Wii, instead of "Mary Had a Little Lamb," and it makes me a little sad. I feel like she's missing out on a little piece of her childhood. Where's Curious George? What happened to Clifford? Are we completely done with Little Miss Muppet?

Other parents of both older and younger siblings...how do you do it? How do you let your older kids grow up...without bringing the younger ones right along with them?

I was very honored this week to learn that an essay of mine had been selected as a Gold Prize winner in a writing contest sponsored by the website Oregon Women's Report, which features my writing occasionally.

The topic was love, and when I heard that I knew exactly which piece of writing I wanted to submit: an updated version of an old blog post on my Dad, and the way he loves our family, and his blueberry waffles.

Click here to go to the Oregon Women's Report site, where you can read my essay, as well as other essays on love this week.

The title of this post? It's an allusion to a poem I read in college, a famous one by a poet named Andrew Marvell who is trying to convince his mistress to sleep with him sooner rather than later. It's kind of a trashy subject, actually, but the things he says about the fleeting nature of time still ring in my head, 350 years after he wrote it, so he was, if nothing else, a pretty good poet. (I don't know about his success in the love department).

I usually feel, like good old Andrew Marvell, that time is rushing past me like a freight train--or, as he put it "At my back I always hear/Time's winged chariot hurrying near." The years are short. I must make the most of them.

But recently, I read a lovely blog post putting forth the idea that there are different kinds of time. Namely, Kairos time and Chronos time. The writer's explanation goes like this:

Chronos time is what we live in. It’s regular time, it’s one minute at a time, it’s staring down the clock till bedtime time, it’s ten excruciating minutes in the Target line time, it’s four screaming minutes in time out time, it’s two hours till daddy gets home time. Chronos is the hard, slow passing time we parents often live in.
Then there’s Kairos time. Kairos is God’s time. It’s time outside of time. It’s metaphysical time. Kairos is those magical moments in which time stands still.

Usually I feel like all I ever see is the Chronos. The hard, slow, passing time.  I push my kids to rush into their pajamas, rush through tooth-brushing, and sometimes when we're really facing down the bedtime clock, I tell them to skip flossing their teeth, so I can just get them in bed already. (Someday they can all throw the bills for their oral surgery at my feet). And why? So I can face the mountain of laundry while I stare at the TV? How is that worth it?

But then there's the Kairos time. Every now and then, I do get a moment of that.

Like while the two littler girls and I are outside the piano teacher's house, waiting for Beth to finish her lesson, and they discover a large puddle. It is a very large puddle, to be sure, but it is, in fact, just a puddle.

Cloud Puddle photo by fauxto_digit on Flickr.

The girls, they are beside themselves with glee at this puddle. They are setting walnut-shell boats afloat on this puddle, and they are poking at its muddy depths with handy sticks, and they are tossing rocks into it just for the joy of the splash. They are all giggles, all glowing eyes, all rosy cheeks and fresh air. They are so healthy and sweet and happy, they break my heart. Watching them, I want to fold this up like a favorite sweater; freeze it in carbonite and ship it off to myself; glaze their giggles with shellac so I can stare at the beauty of this day forever from the other side of a hard protective coating.

I think maybe Old Andrew felt this way about preserving the moment too. In the poem, he tells his mistress that they must "roll all their strength and all their sweetness up into one ball." But then, he says, they must "tear our pleasures with rough strife/through the iron gates of life."

But that's the thing. Kairos is at once eternal and fragile. You can't force it through the iron gates of life without ripping it to shreds, and neither can you lock it into a box so you can take it down and admire at will. If I'm not living it out with them, muddling through the stupid laundry and the grumpy hours side by side, I can't catch these airy moments of strength and sweetness when they float my way.

I have to live out my days, hour after hour of Chronos, even the ones that are not at all awesome, if I want the chance to glimpse Kairos along the way.

Because sometimes the eternal perspective is found in a poem. And sometimes it's in a puddle.

The girls have started pretending that they have a little brother. They blame things on him.
“Oh, that naughty little brother dumped over my cup,” Evie says as they play tea party on the rug.
“Oh, dear,” Lucy says sympathetically. “He always spills our things. And he’s such a boring little brother.”
“Yes, soooo boring,” Evie says.
To be clear, I don’t think they actually WANT a little brother. They seem to just want a scapegoat.

The girls tea-partying it up in the living room. The nice, sweet, kind of tea party, not the angry political kind. (Sweet, except for where they blame everything on their unfortunate imaginary brother).

Also, they apparently now view their own lives as part of an ongoing TV drama. “Let’s do an episode where we lost all our shoes!” Evie says brightly.
“Except not our slippers.” Lucy says.
“Oh, yes. Not our slippers.” Evie says.
Because going shoeless outdoors they can handle. But heaven forbid their toes are cold when they get up in the morning. Their viewing public would never go for that.



We’re walking home from kindergarten in the rain, and Lucy tells me that they didn’t get to play outside at recess today--they had to stay in the gym.
“What did you do in the gym?” I say. “Did you jump rope?”
“No, no jumping rope inside. There’s just hula hoops, or playing with balls, or playing Bubblegum.”
I thought bubblegum was forbidden in most school buildings, so I have to ask. “What’s Bubblegum.”
“Oh! It’s a really fun game,” Lucy says. “How you play it is, you’re sitting criss-cross applesauce in a circle, and you make your hand like this--” She shows me a fist “--and then you say the song: ‘Bubblegum, bubblegum, in a dish. How many pieces do you wish?’”
And suddenly I was transported. I hadn’t thought of that rhyme in years, and yet there it was. I remember vividly the sunny day, the long grass, the neighbor girl chanting those words as we all held our fists in the middle and giggled.
Sometimes I think my kids’ lives are so different from my own. When I was a kid, I had to call my friends on the rotary-dial telephone with the long, curly cord that I liked to wrap around my finger (and you only had to dial five digits to connect to other people in our little town). My daughters, on the other hand, beg to borrow my phone so they can send text messages to their 2-year-old cousin.
And then, just when I think the world has changed so much, my daughter reminds me how to play Bubblegum, and I decide things aren’t so different after all.