If you could just learn to walk you wouldn’t be so heavy.
If you could just tell me what you wanted to eat I wouldn’t waste so much food.
If you could just understand that I won’t take very long you might wait for me a bit longer.
Sometimes, I catch myself wanting to speed up time and if only for a moment thinking to myself if you were just that little bit older….
These were the thoughts I had when my son was less than a year old and they are a great lesson in moments and progression and of thinking too much about a time that will and has long since come to pass.
Now you sleep through the night or near enough that I can’t even remember what it felt like to wake at all hours just to soothe you.
You cry but for things that I now know the remedies to or most of them.
I am clued up and more equipped now that you are older and I find myself staring at you then looking back at pictures of the baby you once were and thinking, how did this happen? When did you get so big?
But still, we can’t go back.
We are where we need to be and if we need to be any further along on our journey it is only, if I’m completely honest, to make my life easier or to allow me more sleep or to make my trying day go a little bit faster.
But you are here to teach me patience.
To teach me what it means to switch off. To let go. To stop thinking too much and too intently about things that don’t really matter and get back to the heart of the matter, that is You.
You growing up is the reality of what I thought I wanted coming to pass much sooner than even I thought or at times even wished it would.
There are so many things to love about every age and stage of being a parent but wishing away the sour stuff is inviting the sweet stuff to pass by just as quickly.
And actually, I want it all.
The hard times that teach me that I still have so much to learn and the good times that I cling to for when I am no longer your favourite place.
You are a mystery. You are my sweet not-so-little-anymore mystery.
The future will be here soon enough so I will appreciate that you are mine today.