The days are long but the years are short.

This is so true! Already I’m planning for Livi’s 4th birthday, and she was only born 15 minutes ago. My tiny wee girl who had me up 10 times a night, every night, for almost 2 years straight and I thought I’d never sleep again, is heading to school in September… how is that even possible?!

I was chatting with a colleague recently, a dad who has older boys, and he was waxing lyrical about how quickly it all goes by. He stopped working for a number of years in order to raise his lads, and he took on other people’s kids too, as a childminder. Telling me stories about rushing here there any everywhere to get the shopping in and get them from nursery and do all the things a parent has to do in the 24 hours a day we are given. And yet now, with his lads in their twenties, how quickly that time went by.

I was grateful for the reminder. The days can feel sooooo long that you’re praying for bedtime to come, but at the same time, Liv’s going to school in September, and I know that once we enter that stage of life, it’s just going to fly by. School days, extra curricular activities, play dates, going to friends’ for dinner… whilst the challenges of parenting remain, I have a feeling I’m going to be desperate for the passing of time to slow down.

Friends who have little girls who are 8 now, sending me photos with captions about how big they are and how they wish they’d stop growing.

I’ve experienced many things in life, I’ve had many opportunities before settling down into marriage and babies, but nothing compares to the fragility and joy of how I have felt as a parent. I’ve seen the worst and the best of myself. I’ve had that desperate “stop the world I want to get off!” feeling, and that deep knowing that I would die for my kids if it came to it. Most days I collapse into bed absolutely wrecked, and so thankful the day is done, but then scroll through photos of my babies whilst missing them when they’re asleep.

I don’t think there’s anything that can compare to it. The highs and lows of this extraordinary rollercoaster called parenting. And I guess depending on your own upbringing, expectations, experiences, filters, culture, and so on, each of us will judge ourselves differently, and have different values for what ‘successful’ parenting looks like. And when I miss the mark that I have subconsciously set myself, that’s when I become my most fragile – because I care more deeply about loving my children well than about anything else, and my apparent failures in that area can knock me for six.

BUT! Simply knowing that that is the case, tells me I’m not doing too badly, because my kids are kind, affectionate, brave, clever, creative, silly, cheeky, hilariously funny at times, and they care about other people. They can be proper little monkeys of course, but that’s the universal right of kids, isn’t it!

It’s emotionally draining, and in the early years at least, it’s physically draining too, but oh my goodness, it is SO worth it. I’m reminding myself to not wish the time away, even though it can be difficult, but to savour every precious moment of them needing and wanting me, because I know it’s not going to last forever.