When I was a young'un, my mother used to tell us kids how quickly time was flying by, and how much more quickly it seemed to fly by as we all got older. She was particularly fond of mentioning this as we approached the Christmas season, when I or my sib would express our desire for Christmas to hurry up and arrive.

But of course, I now have the opportunity to experience that exact phenomenon. Talk about time flying by quickly! The subject came up recently regarding how long Alexander had been sleeping in his own bed on a regular basis, and me realizing that we moved him to his "big boy bed" on New Year's Day (or thereabouts), 2005. Only a year ago. Heyyyy, wait a minute. A year ago? "Only" a year ago?!

Where did the time go? Where did 2005 go? It seems like just a few weeks ago we were worried about whether his potty training would be far enough along in time for him to start pre-school... and, well, that was months ago.

Baby is growing up fast. So many things we'd worried about -- sleep, potty, teething, pacifier, etc. -- are ancient history in a snap. Now we're dealing with questions like what we'll be looking for in a school for him, whether we should enroll him in a gymnastics class, that kind of thing. (More on the subject of education in another post, coming very soon.)

Alex is becoming increasingly articulate. Now when he describes his day at school, I can almost understand what he's saying. And when we picked out our Christmas tree this year, he made it very clear that "I want presents."

I believe I may have noted elsewhere that for the first year or two of his life, I referred to him as Alexander while his mother called him Alex. The shorter form of his name is winning out, as it's easier for his young friends to say and other moms follow Paulette's lead, not mine. No problem. So I've been calling him Alex lately. A day or two ago, he corrected me. "My name is Alexander."

"You want me to call you Alexander instead of Alex."

"Yyyyyup." (I think he got this particular speech mannerism from me.)

At school, there are two Alexes in his class, so our son is known as "Alex R.". Not much of a stretch from Alex R. to Alexander. And I'm pretty certain he remembers me calling him Alexander on a regular basis, even though it's been a while.

But back to time flying by in such a hurry--

I recently downloaded the pictures from our digital camera onto one of our computers, and we had only started taking pictures as we entered the Fall season. Images of him and Nolan in their Halloween outfits kicked things off. And here we are, now, having just passed by Thanksgiving and we are rushing at breakneck speed toward Christmas.

Zip, zip. Time zips by so fast that you could miss something important if you blink.

It snowed here toward the very end of November. Where we live, we typically get snow once or twice in a given winter, every other year. This time around, it fell (and stuck) for about three or four days. (As I write this, the snow has been gone for a little while.) Unfortunately for me, the snow days began while I was out of town on business -- Houston, where there was no snow to speak of.

This was good, big, wet snow. Excellent for snowball fights and making snow men. Paulette and Alexander made a couple of snowmen that first day, using up pretty much all of the snow that was available in our front yard at the time. She took photos for me to see -- this isn't the first time Alex has seen snow, but it is the first time he has actively participated in building a snow man.

I was lucky that by the time I returned, more new snow had fallen and Alexander and I had a chance to build a couple more snowmen. Way fun.

But these kids are growing up so fast! ... a fact that is driven home to me when Alex expresses his preference for me to call him Alexander.