I want to tell you all a secret. Before I had my daughter, I didn’t think parenting would be hard. In fact, I thought it would be pretty easy. I’ll give you a minute to rein in your laughter.
It’s embarrassing to admit how delusional I was back then, but I’m going to anyway. I want to preface this by noting I have no siblings and have never even babysat. I’d never been around kids younger than kindergarten age.
So, I thought that by the time babies became toddlers, they slept through the night. I swore she would never sleep in my bed. I thought toddlers mostly entertained themselves, playing with toys and running around. I pictured my mother-in-law keeping her some weekends. I thought we could maintain at least some of our pre-baby lifestyle. I could go on, but you get the idea.
I was the person rolling her eyes at the grocery store, thinking that a little discipline might cure that screaming child. Or maybe you don’t take the kid in public if he doesn’t behave. That, Folks, is how clueless I was before kids.
Our daughter has been co-sleeping with us, to some degree, since she was four months old. That’s how long my resolve lasted before it was overtaken by my desire to just get some sleep. At almost two, she still doesn’t sleep through the night. I am her primary source of entertainment. My mother-in-law does watch her sometimes, but I can’t imagine letting her spend a night away yet, especially since she still gets in our bed after she wakes up.
Truthfully, I would gladly leave my screaming child at home when she’s not in the mood to go to the store. However, she can’t stay by herself and sometimes we just need things. We’re not there for fun. We’re there because we ran out of something essential, like milk, or diapers, or Gerber crunchies. The dirty looks in the store are preferable to the complete toddler meltdown over lack of crunchies.
Believe it or not, Younger Self, we are having even less fun than you when the kid screams through the entire store, and yes, actually, I am hurrying to get done. It’s just that hurrying means something else once you have a tiny person in tow. (H is actually pretty good in stores most of the time, so long as I let her graze her way through on any snacks she happens to see on the shelves like some kind of tiny, ravenous, pointing, hairless goat. This is made more accurate by the fact that her favorite animal sound is “Baa”, which she is quick to yell at random strangers.)
Of course, I also had no idea how much fun we would have together. That it would be the highlight of my day to let the chores go while we play chase around the living room and laugh together. I didn’t know anyone could love anything as much as I love this little girl.
I didn’t know that most tantrums would be because she’s frustrated she can’t communicate well yet or get her tiny hands to cooperate. I didn’t know that her tears would break my heart. I didn’t know that I would have to intentionally let her get frustrated. That sometimes it’s good for her to learn, even though I want to make her whole life easy and perfect and good.
One other thing I didn’t know? Parenting is genuinely hard, but loving her is easy.
