The view from my seat at the table.

I’m currently sitting at my dining table munching on a late lunch (of chips and homemade guac, a totally acceptable meal), watching my oldest son help our neighbor across the street pressure wash two fifth wheel campers in the humid Texas sun. My neighbor lathers and scrubs in his Army boots and T-shirt with the sleeves cut off; Liam rinses in his faded NY Yankees baseball hat, still wearing the clothes he ran three miles in this morning. Lather, rinse, repeat. This is just one of Liam’s side hustles, the other a lucrative dog walking business. And now that he’s recently been certified in first aid, he’s aiming to convince me he could start babysitting.

And just like that, my firstborn isn’t a baby anymore.

Oh, I’ve been aware of the signs for some time, but it’s been slow to sink in, the fact that, seemingly overnight and quite stealthily, we’ve moved into a new, bittersweet season of life—the teenage years. My scrunchy babies are all almost taller than me and growing faster than I have the mental capacity to parent. This is the end of my parenting know-how. Fourteen years in, we had a good run.

To be honest, I’m not handling it well.

The fact that we may have only four more years with Liam at home, that in the fall he will begin high school, is making my brain want to completely shut down. (Or maybe that’s the perimenopause. I’m convinced it's the universe’s evil plan to put a woman’s hormonal shift right smack dab in the middle of her children’s teenage years. It’s cruel…especially for my husband.)

Last week, we attended an awards ceremony at Liam’s Civil Air Patrol squadron to honor him receiving his Billy Mitchell promotion. This promotion makes him an officer and raises him to the top 15 percent of CAP cadets nationwide; he’s halfway to the highest achievement within the Civil Air Patrol program. My husband was the guest speaker, and as he spoke about Liam’s character and leadership capabilities, I watched my 14-year-old out of the corner of my eye, standing at attention in front of the room in his full Class A uniform, and in that moment, I saw that toothy one-year-old wispy blonde with the mischievous smile playing dress up. Why was my toddler in a coat and tie??

He’s had his second orientation flight with CAP, and let me tell you, that alone makes it harder to enforce rules on safety. When I remind him to put on his helmet when riding his bike, his good-natured response is: “Mom, I’ve flown a plane—thousands of feet in the air—without a helmet.” When we specified that he could not get on the roof of an RV when washing it, he grinned that grin I can’t get enough of and stated, “I go a lot higher in the air than the roof of an RV when I fly a plane.”

I mean, he’s got a point. But I’m still in charge, so he wears a helmet and avoids roofs for now.

Last month, I took him to his first concert, which was a full-circle moment for me personally. For Christmas, Kelley and I gave him two tickets to see Third Day in Austin for their 30th anniversary tour—one of my favorite bands when I was his age. He’s grown to love them, too, and I’ve started teaching him the Third Day songs on bass guitar that I enjoyed playing at his age. I saw them in concert for the first time on a double-date with my brother and his girlfriend when I was a senior in high school, and it was time for a re-do, so I took Liam on a mom-son date for dinner and a show. We chased burgers and fries with locally made root beer at Sour Duck Market in Austin before the concert. Seeing Third Day together, watching his face light up experiencing his first concert, was such a special memory.

These days are full of drum lessons, ballet classes, CAP events, and orthodontist appointments. Eva is bravely wearing a metal spacer on the roof of her mouth, preparing for 18 months of braces, and this weekend Riley will bravely face a crowd while he performs “Range Rover” by Ben Rector on drums in his spring recital. This week in lessons, he practiced his drummer “stage swagger,” rotating his hat backwards and slipping on his sunglasses before tapping the intro beat on the snare and kick. It was so adorable—I mean, cool. I did, however, discourage him from throwing said hat into the crowd when the song ends, since the recital is held outdoors at a local German cafe and biergarten. The last thing we need is for his hat to land on someone’s wienerschnitzel.

Next month, Eva will float across the stage in an ethereal cornflower blue, sparkly tulle costume in her ballet recital, to one of our family’s favorite pieces of music, the theme to the movie The Man from Snowy River. (This is a surprise for Kelley, so don’t tell him. It’s his all-time favorite movie.) She practices her technique everywhere—in the pool, on the street, in the 4’x10’ open floor space of our RV while I’m trying to cook dinner. “Check out my rond de jambe, Mom,” she’ll rhyme as she demonstrates for me, her golden locks swirling around her head when she twirls. Then she’ll ring the bell ornament we have hanging over the sofa on a velvet ribbon and announce, “Hug time!” before she wraps her long, thin arms around my waist and squeezes enthusiastically.

Two weekends ago, Riley and I dropped Liam off at an all-day training for first aid/CPR and then headed to Waco for brunch. We sampled more than our fair share of the menu at Magnolia Table and snapped pictures of the Cottonland Castle in our raincoats before escaping the weather inside Hotel 1928, where Riley unsuccessfully attempted to teach me how to play chess in the cozy library. He was kind and patient, finding positive things to say about my game and smiling underneath those soft, sweepy copper bangs. He’s losing his baby face, but when he looks at me like that, he might as well be that chunky six-month-old with the sunburst hair and generous blue eyes.

No one really told me I would love these kids so much it would hurt, but dang, it does. Motherhood is apparently one swirl of emotion after another, the experience of simultaneously feeling maxed out while craving more, that the moments are simply too much…and not nearly enough. I kick myself sometimes that I didn’t start baby books, or fill journals with all of their funny quips and quotes, or find some clever way of documenting their lives so I can relive them over and over when I find myself with an empty nest.

In the meantime, I’m making mental pictures of the memories we’re creating each time we ride our bikes together or play board games or assemble a puzzle or watch funny panda videos on YouTube or sing karaoke or bake a cake for no other reason than to satisfy a craving.

And I may on occasion mention to them how nice it would be if they live with us forever.