Navigating Life Or Did I Ever Tell You About My Mad Map Skills
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| I Can Do It Myself |
(Although I did not see that yesterday in Bean's and Abu's behavior with each other. Which lead me to ignoring them for an entire afternoon, which was followed by them trying to make dinner, watching the Baby so I could have a break(which translates into a sulk while I contemplated why I had kids), and wait for it...being super nice to each other.)
But back to my sappy blog about how I'll miss them when they're independent, even while I'm super mad at them for being mean to each other. Only in parenthood can we feel a dozen different emotions about our children -SIMULTANEOUSLY.
Mmm, that's not right. Relationships. It's in relationships that we can feel more than one emotion at a time. So preschool really screws a person up. Because the teachers holds up a card that depicts SAD, MAD, HAPPY, or CONFUSED and tells the child that when they have that face on, that is the emotion they are experiencing.
The teachers don't pull out the cards where it shows you can experience sad and happy at the same time. Or mad and love. Or confused and every other emotion with it. No one explains that you can experience happy for someone with envy. Or intense love for your spouse at the same time you're volcanically mad over some situation. (Usually involving one of three things: money, parenting styles, or stealing the covers. I'm starting to think people should give HIS/HER comforters as wedding presents.)
So parenthood involves having your heart experience sweeping waves of being proud of your kid for doing normal everyday things such as eating with a fork or walking - at the same time you're sure they will grow up, move out and never come to visit.
Which BTW- we had to tell the teenager, Bean, good job with eating with a fork the other night. She couldn't understand why we were praising the Baby for EATING. She wrinkled her nose at us and laughed. Point taken and she joined in telling Baby Blueberry what a big girl she was for using a fork and not throwing all her food on the floor.
But anyway, we want our children ready to navigate the world and follow their dreams. Even though we start to miss them with every little step they take towards that goal.
And it starts so young. Before they start to walk but you can really see it when they finally figure out the sweet success of putting one foot in front of the other. A task we take for granted, but one that took each and every one of us many times of falling down and trying again.
Baby Blueberry took quite a while to walk. Crawling was her mode of transportation. She was speedy too. She could crawl faster than most other babies could walk. And so she didn't learn to walk until after her first birthday.
Why? It was slow and torturous. Falling down. Bumping. It took forever to wobble over to the object she wanted, whereas with crawling she could reach her destination in no time at all.
Why change the status quo? She was perfectly happy without walking.
And then, one day, it finally occurred to her. Heck yes, walking was faster.
She hasn't slowed down since. So even though every baby moment I knew we would have, I tried to savor because I knew from past experience it would move oh, so fast, -it still flew by and now my Baby is a toddler.
My oldest is a teenager and my Abu is starting to show signs of being a teenager. (hint: drama, mood swings, and demanding more independence)
One time, long ago, Hero Hottie and I drove down to Texas. I was navigating, thinking that my map reading skills were so awesome. I managed some of the other smaller states pretty well, until I told Hero Hottie we had about three hours in Texas to reach our stop for the night.
Three hours later and we still have a whole lotta of Texas to drive through. Hero Hottie pulls over, an impatient Baby Bean in the back, and studies the map.
He starts laughing.
At me.
I had misread the scale to measure miles, which had changed since Texas is so much bigger than the other states. My inch of Texas included so many more miles than my inch of the other states.
He pats my knees, trying to be encouraging and avoid a fight.
I haven't lived it down but my map reading skills have gotten better since that trip.
But sometimes I think life is like that. I'm always using the wrong scale to determine the length of my journey.
So somewhere this blog entry is about the confusion that is life. How super excited I am that it is Baby Blueberry's 2nd birthday tomorrow and how melancholy it is making me feel.
But mostly this blog entry is about how fast life moves, especially after they learn to walk. Because then it's all about chasing them until they move out.
And teaching them map reading skills.
Oh, and that Texas is a huge state.
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