My son, Addison, came bounding into my room the other day as I was in the slow and tedious process of waking up. He came to my side of the bed, as all my children do. (From the time they were a month old they knew to throw their cries only to my side of the bed, knowing that Dad would simply not wake up without a stiff knock on the head.)

I opened my eyes to look at him.

I don't remember what Addison said as his first greeting of the day, probably something about birds or police or playing a game involving itty-bitty mice, but I looked at him from my prone position with the realization that he was not little anymore. His face, though slimmer, is the same face that’s talked to me non-stop since he was 18 months old, but where did that long, lanky body come from? I stared at his thin arms, his torso and sinewy legs, pronounced by his form-fitting Incredible Hulk pajamas.

It was as if overnight he had entered Mr. Wonka's taffy-pulling machine and come out not a short-legged toddler trying to keep up with his brother, but a child himself. I felt like Geppetto, wanting to breathe in the moment: "You are a real  boy!"

I couldn't shake the thought as I watched him scamper through the house all morning. I remember Addison’s birth no doubt, when he burst onto the earthly scene in an hour flat, and I remember the year-old Addison, the one who told me, to my astonishment, at 13 months that he was "all done" with his cereal. I remember the way he used to scream in rage at 2, for no real reason, and bang his head on the tile.

But beyond that, there is not much I remember, not day-to-day. I don't remember his first step, or when he moved from crib to bed, or when he took up singing and silly jokes. Perhaps it is because I had three children so close together, three boys in three years, that I only now feel as if I’m coming to full reality.

I’ve found parenting to be like this, as if I’m waking up in stages. A child is born … and then, pow! -- the same child is dressing himself, making his own toast, heading out the door to school. And yet it never felt like that at the moment, on those days when I wondered how I would fill 16 wakeable hours with something to do, some way to keep all these children busy and happy.

I went to the zoo once with a friend and as we were leaving she said, "That was great! It took up a whole day." She voiced a feeling I had never fully realized. In fits of first-child parenting syndrome, I used to strap on my tap shoes and tappety-tap my way across our wood floors. It was a way to break up the monotony of one-sided, high-pitched dialogue, rolling balls across the floor, or going to the park for the third time in a day.

Now, filling up a day is no longer the problem; finding time to squeeze it all in is. Has oldest son practiced the piano and done his math? Have I sounded out C-A-T with middle son? Have I even checked my youngest son’s diaper in the past five hours? All of this while keeping the house in some state of chaotic order, cooking meals, running errands, preparing lessons.

Life is full to bursting, and there is no need for the tap shoes.

But still I have this son standing by my bed, and he is growing in a way that is both fabulous and heart-wrenching. My kids sometimes cry out in the night because of the growing pains in their legs, and I rush in and massage the stretching muscles and wrap a heating pad around the pain. It hurts, this growing-up business. If I think about it too deeply as a mother, I'll seize up and lock the doors on the outside world.

How to explain that kids are mean, sometimes vicious? That, while all you want in life is to play college football, your genes are dead set against it? That there are words much stronger than "shut up" and drinks much more damaging than the forbidden soda pop?

These are things I keep to myself.  Time will bring its own punishing realities, and despite the growing pains, I still want to give my kids a childhood filled with shining bubbles, fits of laughter, and afternoons spent on a warm sidewalk with scooters and tennis balls.

I felt this the other day at the park, on an unseasonably warm winter afternoon. I pushed my youngest in the swing while the older two played off in the sandbox. We ate oranges and sandwiches under an oak tree and swatted away at the bees and walked the nature trail amid low-lying cedars. It was one of those instances I wanted to catch and seal up, like a firefly in a canning jar, to place on a shelf and say, This is childhood. Please, stay forever.

It was a fleeting moment, but one I hope my son remembers when he becomes a father himself and realizes the tedium of daily work, bills, and a houseful of rambunctious kids. I hope he remembers that with the pain of growing there were days of light and shadow, but mostly light, that there was love and discipline, but mostly love. If I can tip the scale toward joy, then all these moments, though briefly forgotten, won’t be entirely lost.