It’s not really part of the exit instructions when you leave the hospital with a new baby. There actually should be a warning: Don’t Blink. If you do, he will be grown. It happens so quickly, it’s like watching a time lapsed video.

Yesterday it was as if I hit rewind, in an odd kind of way. Branson hosted a K-Swiss Ironman 70.3 or a half Ironman triathlon. There were 1400 athletes from 43 states and 10 countries competing on the course which is a 1.2 mile lake swim, 56 mile bike ride and 13.2 mile run. I question the sanity of that.

Jason and Travis competed as part of a 3 man relay team on different teams. One of Travis’ teammates told me yesterday in the spring when he asked him to compete, that Travis said, “Aren’t you asking the wrong Brawner brother.” Jason was an All American college swimmer. Travis was an All American college football player and had to think about it for a couple of weeks, but then decided to take it on.

I think Jason, who has done triathlons and marathons, got in the lake 4 or 5 times to get ready for yesterday, because he could. Travis on the other hand, who runs and has done a marathon, worked out in the lake with his friend Matt at 6 am four or five days a week. Endurance in the water is totally different from endurance on land.

So Jim and I were on the shores of Moonshine Beach at 6am with 1400 athletes and hundreds of spectators. My stomach forgot my boys grew up. I felt they were 5 and 7 years old getting in the water.

Jason, the director of a summer camp for special needs kids and an Army National Guard chaplain, was in his camo jammers. Travis, an ear, nose and throat surgeon, was appropriate in conservative black. Two boys, twenty-four months apart in age raised in the same home with the same parents are so different.

Jason was out of the water 10 minutes before Travis; both were smiling with a huge sense of accomplishment or maybe it was the endorphin rush. As my stomach calmed down I realized how odd it is to look into the faces of those two men and still see my little boys.

Warning: Don’t Blink.