When you "admire" a person, you are impressed with them and wish that you had the same qualities. "Admire" can be followed by a person's name or title:

The person I admire most is my mother.

Or, you can "admire" a certain quality of a person:

I admire my mother's generosity.

"Admire" is usually used in the simple present tense. You say "I admire ___", not "I am admiring ___". There is one situation where you use "am admiring". That is when you are looking at something that a person owns or has made. If you look at it for a long time because you think it's great, you can say:

I was just admiring your DVD collection. You have some nice ones here.