Enjoy Them Now…

If one more well-intentioned, caring, sweet person says to me, “enjoy them now while they are young” I think I will scream, cry, lay down on the floor and have myself a nice ole hissy fit.

It’s been interesting that the age group saying this to me is middle-aged to older people. Never a young mom coming up to me saying “enjoy this age now…”. Why is that?

I have an answer. It’s memory loss. The older you get and the farther your kids get out of the “enjoy them now” phase the memory gets more fuzzy. It’s harder to remember exactly how smelly those diapers were, or how often you changed them, or how many hours of sleep you didn’t get, or how many public humiliations your child gave you. Yup, age does funny things to the memories. It makes the good ones really clear and the not so good ones a little more distant and hazy.

I KNOW what they are saying is true, but while you are in the present it’s hard to UNDERSTAND what they are saying.

When I was pregnant with Corbin, many people would tell me “enjoy your free time, go out on those dates with your husband, sleep while you can…”. And again, I knew what these people were saying was probably true because my life was going to change dramatically, but it was hard to actually understand what they meant. And besides, when little Corbie was just a babe in the womb – kicking contently and silently around, never really causing me discomfort, pain, or problems – it didn’t really bother me to hear that advice.

But now, Corbin is out. He’s free, he’s his own person and enjoy them now while you can is a little harder to hear from people. Now Corbin is 7½ months old and has apparently developed another personality. Seriously, this boy went from hardly crying to being a whiny machine. (Ok, someone is going to tell me babies are always changing…seriously, now’s not the time to be throwing around these pieces of “wisdom”… :)

Corbin now has “separation anxiety” (that’s internet diagnosed). Ironic, I stay at home all day, seriously how can you possibly have a separation issue. Oh I know, set him down in the living room, walk to the kitchen (5 feet away…literally, I measured it) and viola, separation has occurred! Wow, really? That’s all I have to say about that.

Then there’s his “separation anxiety” with all things unsafe and not baby approved. For example, taking a cord out of his mouth results in a whine fest; umm, excuse me Corbin, Mommy just saved you from electrocution. Or a remote that has found its way into his mouth; take it away and it appears that we have another alpha male who needs to have control of the remote.

So please, if you see a beautiful, gorgeous, well put together young mom (that would be me :) please don’t tell me to enjoy my child while he is young. Because I am; I really am. I’m enjoying the moments that he giggles so hard he can’t stop, the cuddles I get while reading a book, watching him be fascinated by running water (is that just weird or cute?), and the look of concentration he gets when feeding himself a green bean, and the pure joy of success he has on his face when he actually gets in his mouth.

Yes, I’m in the present, enjoying those moments. But I’m also in the present, not enjoying so much the massive poopy diaper disasters, the random spit ups at church on my slacks that I just got back from the cleaners, and the whiny-all-day “separation anxiety”.

So thank you all well-intentioned sweet people, you don’t have to tell me to enjoy them now because I’m doing that, just in the present where all memories good and not-so-good are fresh like a dirty diaper.

And of course I had to add a picture.

Here’s Corbin all bundled up to enjoy the “brisk” weather.