Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Smelling the Roses

Although I try to stay away from posts that summarize my day, today feels emblematic of a life stage, so I feel the need to at least pause. It's hard to believe that I've been working part time for over two years. The time feels now as though it has flown by. Ain't that always the way.

While we await Teddy's magnet school application for kindergarten in September, I'm taking stock of the fact that the routine that took rather a long while to settle into will evaporate before I know it. In a matter of months, I won't have my two days a week with my little guy anymore. He's changed so much in two years, and he synthesizes ideas and events in a more advanced way every day. Lately, he's just been so sweet and funny and helpful. We have our moments obviously, but the marvelous aspects of Teddy's personality help me pause and realize that we're sharing a wonderful and unique and irreplaceable part of his life right now.

Even though I can recognize that, I worry that I'm not getting all that I can out of these fleeting days. Being a grownup makes me feel like there's so much that I have to do. This isn't just a state of mind, of course; I went part time so that evenings and weekends weren't full of tasks to accomplish. I do need to get things done during the day. But I don't want to look back at this period and just feel like I only spent my off days dragging my cute companion around on errands.

Don't have much of a conclusion here. Just a commitment to try to make the most out of Teddy's (and my) developmental stage.

1 comment:

Paige said...

You wrote: " I don't want to look back at this period and just feel like I only spent my off days dragging my cute companion around on errands." I know what you mean, but don't underestimate the value of just accomplishing daily life in a 3-legged race with a preschooler. Teddy learns and has fun by running errands, and the two of you chat continuously about inane and important things. We have always valued the plain-vanilla git-er-done aspects of being married to each other, and I think parenting is the same way.

I do agree that a constant whirlwhind of chores without pause for reflection is a problem. But this blog post seems to show that's not YOUR problem.