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I was recently avoiding all of the housework and holiday work by scrolling through social media when I came across a video of children growing up, with this note scrolling across the bottom:

The hardest part of motherhood? You don’t get to keep any version of them. Not the baby curled on your chest, not the toddler with messy cheeks, not the little voice calling mama down the hall. They are all temporary. Each one leaves quietly, replaced by someone new you’ll love just as deeply. No one warns you how much it aches to love someone who is constantly changing so fast you don’t even realize until that version of them is already gone. And the hardest part… you never got to say goodbye.

I don’t even know who originally posted it, but it felt like one of those lucky algorithm pairings. One minute I was mindlessly scrolling, and the next it was as if I had invited an old friend over for coffee and we were watching the chaos unfold together.

Because that’s what it looks like, doesn’t it? Our children grow up right in front of us while the kitchen gets raided, the TV gets claimed, and someone is always moving between “I want to be near you” and “Please do not breathe in my direction.” In our house right now that looks like one teenager, one preteen, and one a bit younger, orbiting through the day like tiny hurricanes. They want peppermint mocha lattes with their moms, until they absolutely do not. They want to chat until they disappear. And somehow, in the middle of all of it, time keeps slipping forward.

I often say to exhausted parents, “This too will pass.” I say it about the sleepless nights, the sticky fingers, the phases that feel endless. I promise parents that they will blink and suddenly realize no one is crawling into their bed at 2:00 a.m. anymore. No one is throwing themselves dramatically onto the grocery store floor as if the lack of a lollipop is a true injustice. One day, you will be able to pee alone again. You will.

But the part I don’t always say out loud is this: the reason it passes is that they change. And while that’s the goal, and while we’re proud of it, it can still ache.

As we head into what might be the most magical and most exhausting time of year for parents, I wanted to share this note with you. Because in the coming days, many of us will be up late making magic and up early experiencing it with our children. We’ll referee disagreements that happen because everyone is over-tired from the magic. We will live on coffee, cookies, and dry shampoo. We’ll step over toys and crumbs and wrapping paper and think, for the tenth time, “How is it already December 18th?”

And one day, the toys will be replaced by smaller, more expensive gifts. One day, your child will be old enough to solve a very specific holiday emergency with the kind of confident creativity that makes you laugh and cry at the same time. (I’m not saying this happened in my house on Thursday morning, but I’m also not not saying it.) Imagine this: an ugly sweater deficit. A dramatic pause. A mom with an idea, “Wait.” A new sweater is unwrapped, immediately decorated with felt, then demanded back so it can be rewrapped and put back under the tree as if this was the plan all along.

I didn’t get to hug my Paw Patrol-loving boy goodbye. I didn’t get to hug my once-sequins-and-dresses-loving girl goodbye. Those versions left quietly, just like the poem says. But I do get to hug the versions I have right now.

And I’m trying to do it on purpose.

I hug them when they are kind. I hug them when they are helpful. I hug them when they are driving me absolutely crazy. I hug them when they let me in for a minute, and I hug them when they’re halfway out the door, growing right past me.

This holiday season, I invite you to do the same.

Hug them. Hold them. Take the extra second because you will have completely different children next holiday season.

From my family to yours, I wish you the warmest, snuggliest, most joyful of holidays.