Before I had kids, I would picture the moments I was most excited for. The feeling of a tiny hand tucked into mine while walking through a parking lot. Pushing my baby on a swing over and over again to get a glimpse of a gummy smile. The sweet, somewhat obvious stuff that you dream up when you’re imagining what motherhood will feel like.
What’s harder to picture beforehand are the everyday pieces of parenthood that I can see now that I have two kids, both under 3. Bedtime routines with three or more book requests every night. All the “5 more minutes” pleas at the library. Invitations to come play trucks when you’re so close to having the dishwasher completely emptied.
Some mornings, I look around, and my living room floor is covered in blocks, there’s a pile of laundry that has been “almost done” for three days, and I’m moving through the mental tabs of everything I need to get done before I’m asked for a snack. Again.
These moments aren’t exactly hard, but they’re the mundane, repetitive layer of parenting that can start to grate on even those of us with the biggest hearts. Rinsing sippy cups and listening to the same song for the sixth time on the drive to preschool. You’re grateful, but sometimes, without meaning to, you find yourself rushing through them. At least I know I do.
Then I read something about how every ordinary moment has a last time. And it stuck.
There is always a last time
A last bath before they decide they’re a shower person. A last time they ask you to stay for one more story. A last pull away from whatever you’re doing to build a tower. You don’t get a warning, but these things just stop happening.
I’m a get-the-checklist-done type of person, and parenting asks you to let a lot of that go. My son wants to race motorcycles around the couch, but there’s also dinner to make.
My daughter is happily smashing a banana in her high chair, and I want to fully be there with her, and I also really want to wipe down the counters. Some days I have to.
But I catch myself more now and ask myself if I can spare even five minutes, since this might not happen tomorrow.
I know there will come a day when my son stops asking me to play. When my daughter grabs a banana and heads out with friends. These things don’t end with an announcement; instead, they slowly stop, and you realize it afterward.
It doesn’t work every time, and that’s okay
This “last time” notion doesn’t work on my mind every single time, and I want to be honest about that. Some days, I am simply getting through it, and that’s plenty.
Bedtime is where I tend to feel it most. My son doesn’t need to nap anymore, but he still takes one at daycare, which means bedtime keeps creeping later and later. By the time we’re in his room, I’m the one nodding off while he’s still chatting away. On those nights, “this could be the last time” actually sounds pretty preferable.
But, as often as I can on these very late nights, I stay for one more song. I keep my hand on his back a little longer. And this definitely isn’t because I’ve got it all figured out, but because I know that one night I won’t be asked to.