When the “It Gets Better” campaign came out, I thought to myself, “That totally applies to full-time stay-at-home parenting too!” It’s one of my mama mantras that gets me through the minute/day/week – knowing that this particular phase we’re going through with the kids won’t last forever. In fact, I’ve come to accept, and even embrace, the fact that the only sure thing about parenting is change. As soon as you get into a groove with the kids’ emotions or behavior or routine, *bam*, it all goes out the window. Baby sleeping 12-hour stretches at night? Say bye-bye to that after a week and hello again to broken sleep of 4-5 hour chunks. Toddler professing absolute love for mama and daddy today? Tomorrow, it’s “you are not my mom and I am not your friend.” There’s a flip side too, though. Such as when my 13-month-old decided to eat broccoli on his eighth try. Whoohoo! That was a fist-pump moment for sure.
However, with kids, “it” doesn’t necessarily get better as much as “it” gets different. In my three-and-a-half short years as a parent, I’ve come to learn that each stage has as many (if not sometimes more) challenges as the previous one. Yes, certain things do get better, like when you no longer need to deal with diapers. In exchange, though, you navigate public potty usage and cart around spare changes of clothes. And I often hear from my more seasoned parent friends how much they miss the early days when hurts could be hugged and kissed away, and their kids openly shared their thoughts and feelings with them. Their perspectives are important reminders for me to enjoy the moment I’m in right now, rather than wish the kids would grow up sooner.
As it is already, the kids will grow up sooner than I will like and everything will keep getting different whether I like it or not. So I’m just going to focus on how finite each moment is, and try to enjoy their differences.