Just over 2 years ago I wrote my very first blog post. Were you reading then? If you aren't my mother than you probably weren't. You should go check it out HERE.
Don't worry, I'll wait.
All done? Excellent. In case you didn't click over, in that post I wrote about what it was like to bring my new babe home. Not to my home but to my parents' home. To the hometown I grew up in. I wrote about what it was like, as a parent, to realize that your own parents love you as much as you love your kid. That's a pretty humbling and overwhelming experience.
In the two years of blogging that have come since I've tried to, more consciously and not always successfully, frame my experiences as my own more clearly. Because it's important to remember that not all kids are fortunate enough to grow-up with parents, or with parents who love them in that unconditional, overwhelming, parent-y kind of way. And, because of post partum depression or other factors, some parents may struggle to feel that kind of emotion. But, the truth remains that in that moment those feelings were my experience. And I will never forget that trip.
Two years and a few months later and I am prepping to make that same trip. This time with a toddler. A toddler who sometimes dances sweetly with me in the afternoon. But is equally as apt to bite me for no reason at all. A toddler who is my whole heart and yet also the reason for my exhaustion. He is, hands down, the most amazing part of my life.
And yet.
I just need a damn break. Not for an hour or two (I'm grateful to be parenting with a partner and although we have a lot going on these days we are both careful to give the other breaks). But for several days in a row. Because toddlers are really, really, tiring. And they just never stop moving. Have you ever watched that Toddlers and Tiaras show where they give the kid an overdose of sugar to get her all bouncy? That makes about zero sense to me right now. Because toddlers are bouncing balls of uncontainable energy in their natural state. Why anyone would try to increase that is beyond me.
Anyway. I'm heading home again. And this time I'll also be thinking about how amazing it is to have people out there who love me as much as I love Mac.
And I'm so grateful for that because it means that they will take me in and let me sleep for three days in a row and run around with Mac until they are ready to sleep for three days in a row to recover.
Shout out to all the parents of multiples, to those of you with several toddlers at once, and to the rest of us who have one toddler who feels like many. I hope you have grandparents in your life who love you that much too.
