IF I KNEW THEN...

When I had a single child, I thought life was insanely hard. Oh how little I knew. These days, when I have the opportunity to enjoy one-on-one time with a child, I hate for it to end. I cherish it! It's SO easy! And fun! What happened?

Did I become a better parent? Not likely. Did I learn patience and understanding? On a very limited level maybe, but that's not it. I believe I came to my senses and realized that I might have been making my life harder than it needed to be.

Parenting a single kid is blissful. At least in comparison to parenting two. I am more relaxed and more focused on the activity at hand when I get to be with one or the other. The time is of much higher quality than when shared between the two. This makes me a little sad, that I can't have this high quality time when with both my kids together but, at their ages and given their stages, I'm not sure that's an obtainable goal.

If I knew then what I know now, I would have spent more time putting my daughter to sleep at night. I would have enjoyed the hour of rocking her and letting her fall asleep on my chest. Although I consider myself a very involved and focused parent, I wish I would have had the foresight to know our time together was brief and had the patience and endurance to battle the rough times with more sensitivity.

Obviously, we can't go back and change anything, but I'm really enjoying the times I get to spend with my kids and am getting emotional at their rapid growth and developments. And they're still so young! I'm jumping in with both feet to encourage and delight at each development. Daughter is big on make-belief and role playing and I try my hardest to be present in her moment. Son is a goof-ball by all means and learns new sound effects daily. I attempt to further his non-word vocabulary and try to distinguish the sounds of a diesel engine from an unleaded one.

Sigh, hindsight is always 20/20.