Tag: parenting

As a disclaimer at the beginning of this post, I will freely confess that I am not finding the last month of pregnancy particularly enjoyable.    Mostly I’m feeling like surely it’s already been nine months and this whole state of existence should have ended by now… but that’s obviously not the case, as anyone can plainly see.

This morning I took some pictures of my 18 month old trying to do a forward roll.   She’s really good at getting her head on the floor, but cannot push herself over.  Still, she tries and she laughs and she does it over and over again.

It was cute enough to me that I managed to get the camera out, and even crouch down on the floor in an attempt to get a photo I would like.

Then she found a pair of my shoes that I didn’t put away after coming home from church yesterday.

So we took some pictures of her trying to do a somersault in her mom’s heels.

Little moments like this, I know I will miss someday.   I’m sure I’ll wish I still had a baby rolling around on my family room floor, babbling and laughing without a care in the world.

Yes, I know I will miss this.

But there are other things I wonder about.

I just finished watching a slideshow of our vacation pictures, which I turned on to help that same adorable 18 month old snap out of a tantrum she was throwing.  Thankfully it worked, but I ended up with her sitting on top of my pregnant stomach, with my three year old sitting on what is left of my lap, and my four year old sitting on my shoulder, wrapping her legs around my arms, neck, and so forth.

Let’s just say that I felt a little smothered during that 30 minute experience.  And we’ll say that I felt a little bit warm with about 80 extra pounds sitting all over me.  But I just sat there and told myself that I should endure it because the children were enthralled, because we were together, because aren’t mom’s supposed to handle moments like this without complaint?

And the question came to my mind, “will I miss this?”

I honestly don’t know.  Given how I feel at the moment, I would think that the answer is NO WAY!  But what if I’m wrong?  What if I miss the feeling of having so many bodies so close to me that I want to scream?  It happened yesterday at church, too.  I had this moment when I wondered if I would be able to just sit there with so many people scooting closer and closer…or if I would just stand up and scream.  Gratefully I survived without causing a scene.

But really, will I miss it?  Will I miss the feeling of being the bottom of the family dogpile?
Barbara Kingsolver wrote, “It’s surprising how much of memory is built around things unnoticed at the time.”
Believe me, I noticed this one.  But if I wasn’t 8 months pregnant, I might not have noticed it so much.

My guess is this:  I may not particularly miss the feeling of being smothered by lots of wiggly little bodies, but I’ll probably miss what it represents.  I think it represents a stage of  life when all of a child’s problems can be solved simply by closeness, by being near their parents.  A time when the world really is as small as the walls of your home and you can still keep everything unwanted out of their sweet little lives.  A stage when their needs and their hearts are so uncomplicated, when all they need or want is love.  A time when I really can fix most of their problems with a kiss and a hug.  I’m pretty sure I will miss that.

HH

If there’s one thing I didn’t anticipate about parenting, it is all the decisions that need to be made.
I didn’t foresee how difficult it would be to choose which activities to involve my children in, how much to push them, how to maintain a balanced life for each of them individually and somehow find a balanced lifestyle for the family as a whole.

This week would be the week of decisions.
It doesn’t help that most of the year is decided in May, when you’re most exhausted and least able to really perceive how things will work out.

Gymnastics.  Soccer.  Piano lessons.
Scouts.  Church activities.  Swimming lessons.

What about time with friends?  Time to ride your bike?  Time to read a book?
What about time to work around the house?  Homework?  Time to go on an outing with Dad?
What about time for good, old-fashioned childhood?

You want them to develop their talents, to give them opportunities to stretch and find new strength deep inside them.  But you don’t want it to come with a price tag that ends up being too high.  You don’t want to burn them out or have them gone so much that you lose your opportunities to just be a family.

I have an old friend whose least favorite words are “missed opportunity”.  She makes many decisions with the assistance of these words.  As a mother, though, I’ve learned that every thing we choose to do means there are many other things we’re choosing NOT to do.  It’s important to grab opportunities when they come, but if we grab too many of them, we miss the opportunity to live a balanced life, or we miss the opportunity to gather at the kitchen table for family dinner (the studies regarding the importance of family dinner are amazing!).  So I guess my own question isn’t so much about whether this choice will turn out to be a missed opportunity as much as whether it is the RIGHT opportunity at the RIGHT time.  And you hope so much it will be a positive experience.

This is what you want to see.

My husband took this picture on his phone at my daughter’s last gymnastics meet of the season.
She looks so happy, and so at home.  My eyes tear up a little because I’m so grateful it turned out to be such a great experience for her.

You hope your decisions feed them, make them happy in the true sense of the word.  You hope they will feel a sense of accomplishment because they’ve invested so much.

So with a deep breath and a prayer in my heart, we push forward with our choices for next year.
And oh, how I hope it will all work out!  Through the grace of God, I know it can.

Jennifer