easier/harder

Do you ever feel like you're wishing away the age that your child is at because it's harder than what you anticipate the next stage will be?  I guess I wouldn't say I'm wishing it away, but I find myself thinking "it sure will be better when..." Fill in the blank with anything the boys will be able to do 6 months or 6 years from now.  There is always something easier and harder than the way it used to be...there is always something easier and harder about the way it will one day be.

When the baby is a newborn, you're thinking it will be nice when they can sleep through the night, tell you what you want, and doesn't need to be held all the time. Later you remember how snuggly they used to be, how they used to nap 6 times a day, and how they didn't ever say "mommy, I don't like you anymore."

When they are 6 months old you wish they could walk or crawl so you don't have to carry them every second of every day anymore.  Once they start that, you'll remember what it was like to sit them in one spot on the floor and leave the room, knowing they would still be there when you got back.  You know, as opposed to licking electrical outlets or something (mine have safety plugs, I'm just saying!).

Then they turn 2 and they start throwing tantrums like you've never seen. The kind non-parents didn't know existed.  Then you think, man, it will be nice when he's 5 and can be reasoned with at times like this.  You think it was a lot easier when we didn't have to try to talk him into peeing in the potty every day.  Or bribe him to eat.  Or bribe him to do just about anything because he's so dang independent that he wants to do what he wants to do when he wants to do it, or else (see first sentence of this paragraph).

Needless to say, I am only 2 years and 5 months into this parenting thing.  I can only imagine how I'll be sitting around one of these days, feeling pretty sad about my boys driving away from home on Friday night to go to a high school basketball game or pick up their dates.  I'll remember how they wanted me when they were sick and how they reached for me to pick them up out of their cribs.  I'll think about the joy on their little faces when they were only 1 & 2 years old and they had just discovered something so simple and new.  Every time I find myself idealizing how wonderful the future will be, I bring myself back to the right now because these little kids of mine?  They are pretty much perfect and the most fun that they've ever been.  Will there come a day that I don't feel that way anymore?  Hope not.

~C~