Thoughts from a (busy) mom
I’ve been so busy filling the blog with pictures of our various activities that I haven’t given an update on just life. The truth is that, in the words of Ferris Bueller, life is moving pretty fast. It seems like just yesterday that the new school year began, and now we’ve moved on to other things: the start of camp (including a new one for Zoe), our house project, Avery’s recent birthday (still can’t believe she’s four) and several trips (starting next week, we’re taking three vacations in seven weeks). Despite the occasional stressors, life is good - it just seems to be moving in a flash.
(Zoe even commented the other day, during a discussion on her being a first-grader now, that the school year had flown by. “I hate to tell you, Zoe, but time goes faster the older you get,” I told her. And I didn’t have a good answer to her follow-up of “why?”)
I’ve also been thinking lately, as I often do, about how different life is with slightly older children. With two increasingly independent girls (who have long slept through the night), I’m no longer physically exhausted. I’m also mostly free of the baby- and toddler-related worries; I no longer have to stress about leaving home with a million snacks and a change of clothes, or getting home from some activity by 1 or 2 for naptime each afternoon. (Amazingly, the girls lasted the entire day when we recently visited Great America.) But I feel way, way busier and emotionally exhausted than ever before: Long gone are the leisurely walks or mellow playdates with my little ones*; in their place is loud interactions with two spirited girls who often demand my full attention. And dealing with school paperwork, taking kids to/from various locations, and managing the family schedule sometimes feels as if it could be a part-time job on its own!
But as Ferris Bueller also said, “if you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” So I better start looking around…
-M
*I fully recognize, upon a second read of this, that I’m glamorizing life with a little one. It’s not like my days then were all peaceful and, as I put it, “leisurely” – and I’ve got my blog entries to prove it! But we tend to forget the hard times after they’ve passed, don’t we?
July 2nd, 2013 22:55
You can tell her that the real reason why time seems to go faster as you get older is that each year becomes a smaller proportion of your whole life. When you are two, the last year was half of your live. When you are ten, a year is only a tenth of your life. And that’s the truuuthffrff!!