I read a quote that said, "No one prepares you to say goodbye to all the different versions of your child you'll meet."

If you're a parent, I'm sure that tugged on your heart strings as much as it did mine, and it couldn't be any more true. So often we think to ourselves, "Where is the time going? When did my baby become a toddler? When did my baby become a full blown kid?" I remember shedding a few silent tears every now and then as I watched Kora grow up, and even still, it seems like it all happened in an instant.

The pudgy, fuzz-headed infant became a curly-headed toddler obsessed with Bubble Guppies. I remember being blown away when she spoke three-word sentences. I blinked, and suddenly she didn't want to watch Bubble Guppies anymore. She stopped calling me Mama or Mommy and just started calling me Mom. Her hair is long, the curls holding on for dear life at the ends. That wild-haired toddler in pull-ups is gone forever now - nothing but a distant memory.

She thinned out, long and lean like her father. Her favorite color is blue, and she insists on watching My Little Pony every single night. She holds full-blown conversations with me. She goes to school and has friends of her own. She ditched the ugly Christmas Bear and now clings to an ugly rabbit beanie baby named Molly.

Not only will her appearance change along with her interests and favorite things, but her mannerisms will too. Essentially almost everything that made her who she was in that era will change. It's almost a kind of mourning, I think.

No one prepares you for the fact that you will lose that child.

Because that infant grows up into that toddler.

That toddler grows up to be that kid.

Then that kid becomes that teenager.

The teenager evolves into an adult, just like you right now, and they set off to navigate this scary world on their own while we sit here with this ache in our chest, still wondering, "Where is the time going? Where did my baby go?"

I wish I had an answer - a cure - for this, but honestly I'm just as lost and scared as you are, clutching to the memories of my growing babies.

I think the best we can do is to try to slow our lives down sometimes, to be more present, because even though the days seem long, the years are so, so short. As much as we would like to stop time from taking our babies away, we have no other choice but to just let them grow.