How fast they grow!

I got to see my neice on Easter and I can't get over how much shes grown since I saw her last month. Not only is she bigger, but she is starting to look less like a baby and more like a little girl. She is reacting to things much more than ever before. She has been a very expressive baby from day one, but now that she comprehends things more (or atleast tries too) you can't help but keep your eyes glued to her to see what funny thing she does next. Its strange, I guess I had never paid that much attention to babies before, but it is so amazing to watch them try to take in everything and sort it all out. I can't wait to see her grow even more. I can already see she has a lot of the great qualities that her mom has that make her the amazing woman that she is.

Knowing both of her parents, I'm pretty sure its only going to be a few years before she starts trying to help birds with broken wings and builing huts for the bugs in the backyard to live in. My nephew has been sprouting like a weed too. He is coming up on his first birthday and already seems like he is ready to take on the world. We took him to the zoo the other weekend and I was pretty sure that he wasn't going to have any idea what was going on. Much to my suprise he was wide eyed (well, for most of the time) and wanting to explore everything. He was also kind enough to share some of his rice snacks with me. Granted, by the time that he handed them to me they were so covered in drool that they were mostly mush so I had to decline. None the less, a very nice jesture. He seems to be becoming very empathetic. I swear it was only last week that he was a newborn, unaware of the world and the people around him. I'm not going to lie. Part of this whole thing makes me excited to have kids some day and another part of it makes me scared to death to have children of my own. They grow and change so fast, I don't know how I would ever be able to keep up with that! Well, as for now I am content to just watch from the sidelines and try to take as many notes down as I can before I have to take the field.