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The post Marriage Isn’t Over After Kids. first appeared on Jennifer S. White.

I miss having friends, but not as much as I thought I would.

I still have friends, but not the kind of friends I used to. Currently, with two kids under the age of 6, it’s mainly texting. Rarely is it phone conversations. Actual in-person interactions are even more rare.

Initially, when I became a new mom for the second time after giving birth to my second daughter, I had visions of playdates and excursions and, essentially, my life remaining the same as when I just had one child. It didn’t stay the same.

My new baby was difficult to breastfeed with any noise or activity anywhere nearby, so nursing her at restaurants was completely out. The friends I had, who would invite my oldest daughter and me over, stopped inviting us. I had to retain a sense of normalcy for my oldest, and for myself, but it was hard. Everything was harder with two kids, at least at first.

Then, somewhere, it got easier. It happened so gradually I didn’t notice it. But I began realizing I was taking my kids out to lunch, or to grocery stores, and that we were places besides tucked in our family room, and it was going relatively well. To be fair, I save most of the “big” errands for the weekends when we can do them as a foursome with their dad. Going on our main grocery store runs, for instance, or apple picking like we hope to do this afternoon—these have become Saturday things instead of “Mommy and Me” weekday ones.

Somewhere my two daughters became friends. Two days ago they were sitting cross-legged with their knees touching, heads huddled forming a heart shape with their bodies, whispering about the television show they were watching, while my husband and I watched them without their knowledge from the kitchen. They play so well despite their age gap that, twice last week and once the week before, my toddler had meltdown crying sessions over missing her big sister; begging me to go pick her up from school.

Somewhere having two kids became easier than having one. I could shower—fast, hurried showers still, but, nonetheless, I didn’t worry as much, or hear phantom cries, about my children getting hurt because now they’ll run into the bathroom and say “uh oh” if anything happens to each other (even things I don’t need to know about, like a booger on the end of someone’s finger).

Somewhere on this meandering journey of raising two little girls, I’ve become so used to having two children that those four years when it was only my oldest daughter and me seem like warm, fuzzy memories I have to hold onto carefully.

Somewhere I have to remember these “Mom of little kids” years, although full of challenging days when I wish I wasn’t the only adult home with them until close to dinnertime, are so far easily the best of my life—maybe they always will be.

I told a stranger during a conversation at a restaurant—out with my two kids—that if I had known how wonderful having siblings would be I might have been less afraid and done it sooner. (He and his wife are getting close to wanting their second child.) I wouldn’t do it differently, of course—even if I could. I love these two little people, and I really do cherish the “alone” time I had with my oldest. More, this spacing allows me to have some “alone” time with my second born before she goes off to school, too.

But my daughters are not my friends, although I want them to enjoy my company—although I enjoy theirs—they’re my kids. I’m the grown-up. And I still need friends.

I need friends, but my time right now is limited. I can and do plan self-care. Exercise, reading a good book, writing—all ways I nurture my own well-being—are activities I plan and wiggle into my life, but the stark truth is I only have a handful of years out of all of the ones that will make up my life to have these two little people under my care.

It will be gone in a flash.

In what will feel like a split second, my husband and I will have no more diapers in the house. Our sleep will be mostly unbroken. Our lives will fold back into itself in a new kind of normal; one where we aren’t caring for people smaller than waist or knee height.

I don’t want to rush these years, even if some days I would speed up a touch. I don’t want to talk over my kids asking me to do a puzzle with them to make a phone call to a friend who I do love and miss, but who hopefully will understand I’ll have a much easier time talking in five years. In this meantime, let’s text and keep one another close in our hearts.

In this meantime, I’m here, living mindfully with my children, more than aware that my “Mommy” years are limited.

My oldest already calls me “Mom” sometimes. I asked her yesterday when she started calling me Mom instead of Mommy, and she tilted her head curiously at me and grinned. Like I caught her at something. Like I caught her at growing up.

And I do miss my girlfriends. My sister is getting married, and I’m racking my brain to figure out how I can plan a halfway decent bachelorette party around kids’ bedtimes and the fact that they still wake up at 5 a.m. regardless of when Mommy drips herself into bed.

I do miss my easy, hour-long talks with friends in other states. I miss making plans to see movies my husband won’t want to see with me. I miss it, but not as much as I anticipated.

Because, somewhere, my life as a mother became not a consumption of the person I still am outside of parenting, but it became enough. At least for right now.

The post I Miss Having Friends, but Right Now Being a Mom Is Enough first appeared on Jennifer S. White.

If I’m not happy now, I’ll never be.

This sentence randomly popped into my head one evening, as I sat on my red sofa. It was that single notoriously chaotic hour before putting the children to bed.

Possibly I’m the last person who should be writing about “happiness” right now. It’s not that I’m unhappy, necessarily, but life with small children is, for me at least, stressful, and I don’t pretend otherwise. Conflicting with this beautiful mess of parenting children under six was when my oldest started kindergarten last week. It brought a flood of tangled, fragile, and sometimes volatile emotions—this awfully uncomfortable internal dichotomy of being so, so happy for her while being so, so sad for me.

People say having kids is hard. They say it because it’s true. Still, I know—even as I work through these “long days” and stormy emotions of loving little people so much and then watching them gorgeously break away—I know these are the best years of my life.

Recently, I was recalling to a friend how afraid I was in high school when adults would tell me high school contained the best years of a person’s life. I personally hated it, and hearing this made me feel terrified I would never be happy. Then I left. I went to college. I found subjects I loved to study, and, more importantly than anything else, I found my own groove in this world and in myself, and life became something kind of wonderful.

So I’m leery of imagining that any particular grouping of days are the best ones we’ve got, when, really, life is more of a scramble of good things—great things!—tragedies and stress. Additionally—although it seems saccharine and unicorn mythical—there’s value in thinking that how we perceive and enjoy life is a choice.

I’ve found it extremely helpful to look at my days as a whole; to consider that this one thing might have been pretty terrible, but this other thing was good, and that maybe somewhere in my brain and heart I can try to focus a little less on the bad and a little more on the good. This said, the world is realistically a place that, especially right now, is asking us to acknowledge and own the atrocities that exist (whether we ignore them or not) so we can make beneficial changes—the honest mentality that things can only get better with acceptance, effort and tenacity.

There’s also value in understanding mental illnesses like clinical depression, and the very real needs many people have for medication. There’s value, further, in trying to eat healthfully and take care of ourselves through exercise and relaxation. (But, like yesterday, when I saw a meme posted about how the best medicine for happiness is sunshine, exercise and rest, I couldn’t help but think that this is true—to an extent.)

Even with well-placed efforts and self-awareness, sometimes life feels…sucky. Some days are ones I want to race through, while more of my days than not contain places I wish I could stall.

I wish I could stall these years of my kindergartner’s life that flew past me. I was conscious of them and their voracious speed, sure, but regardless she’s now suddenly in kindergarten and not coming home until I’m thinking about what we’re having for dinner. I wish I could pause that smile on my toddler’s face when she came up an inch from mine just to stare at me. I wish I could pause her pride at being in her gymnastics leotard for the first time ever, this morning.

Life doesn’t work this way and, as the other night when I sat on my red sofa, I had this stomach punching realization that if I didn’t stop and embrace what’s wonderful about my life and the people within it more often than I admittedly do, I’m going to miss out. I’m going to miss it. I’m going to be on my phone or bitching to a friend, and it will all be gone.

This is different than pretending I have on and off switches for happiness. The idea we can shut out anything negative and just “be happy” isn’t only phony, it doesn’t feel comfortable either. Because there’s a different form of beauty and joy that arrives when we work through the complexity and intricacies that come along with the territory of being human. Because there’s a sharp, crisp appreciation of beauty and happiness that distinguishes itself when we sit smack next to uncomfortable feelings like stress and grief.

Things will happen in life that will make “happiness” not our first priority. We will have health scares. We will love. We will lose. Sometimes it’s this same deep sadness that shows us the veracity that our simplest, purest, and tiniest parts of life are often the ones that make us light up most. We’re reminded that our quality of life is stitched together in a profound patchwork rather than created from separate, more definitive parts.

My daughter’s throaty laugh, and the way she tells me I’m silly when I make her giggle, or the warm sensation of my baby’s belly pressed to mine when I nurse her; the instant calm of my husband touching my neck with the palm of his hand—these are some of the most magical, genuinely happy flashes in my life.

But, with all these enormous tangles and off-road paths of life, maybe happiness doesn’t have to be fleeting or illusive. Maybe a big part of it is still us.

If I’m not happy now, I’ll never be.

This sentence, alone, keeps popping into my head. There is no ending. Maybe that’s what we struggle with.

The post If I’m Not Happy Now, I’ll Never Be. first appeared on Jennifer S. White.

I don’t know if the 14-year-old me would be so surprised that I’m still holding the hand of the boy I fell in love with 22 years later.

I don’t know if I’d be that surprised we’re married with two kids.

I knew even back then that something about him, and about us, was special. But our relationship has taken hard work and not only commitment, but constant re-commitment—no relationship is always easy, or perfect, or so “meant to be” that it doesn’t take effort, too.

Here are 11 ways we’ve kept our own love story alive after 22 years and two kids:

1. Never go to the bathroom with the door open.

Ever.

2. Don’t use being tired as a repeat excuse to not connect.

Nothing is more rejuvenating, after all, than making love.

3. Take care of ourselves.

A healthy partnership is made of two healthy people. Always remember the importance of self-care.

4. Don’t rehash the past.

By all means, work through issues that need to be worked through, but bringing up past arguments during current ones should be a definite no.

5. Talk about our goals.

It’s important to talk about what we want out of life and where we want to go. This has really helped us evolve together and as individuals, too.

6. Communicate.

In general, being able to talk to our partner is so important.

7. Go to bed mad.

Okay, I’m not necessarily advocating going to bed angry. No one likes that. What I am advocating, however, is not sticking to cutesy rules someone else made up—my list included—as the cornerstone of our personal partnership. (And sometimes going to bed mad means sleeping on words that could have been said that really didn’t need to be, and waking up realizing an argument that seemed huge yesterday wasn’t that big of a deal.)

8. Kiss.

I think kissing is more important than sex. I’m not saying sex is unimportant, but there’s something special, intimate and powerful about a really good kiss. We try to always kiss when we part or greet each other and to have at least one great kiss a day.

9. Don’t talk about our partner behind his or her back.

I’m not suggesting we can’t talk with friends or vent about something to other people at all, but I am offering it should be a stable expectation to talk to our partner about something that’s bothering us rather than talking to others.

10. Laugh.

Over and over again the one thing that connects us is laughter.

When life is so hard we could scream or cry we do, yes, do these things sometimes, but mostly we try to laugh—we try to make each other laugh when we need it. We try to find the 14 and 15 year olds in us who met all those years ago, inside of our grown-up lives as thirtysomethings—and that’s real romance.

Because life can be difficult, but it can still be fun.

11. Don’t give up.

Romance won’t always look the same. But it doesn’t have to be grand, expensive gestures.

It can be getting a favorite food at the grocery store, or getting out cash for our daughter’s gymnastics lesson because I have an illogical aversion to banks (random, made-up example).

Romance can be going out for an appetizer and a drink when we don’t have time to go out to dinner. It can be sitting on the front porch together watching the rain fall and holding hands.

Above all else, just don’t give up on romance. Instead, reinvent the definition.

The post 11 Tips for Keeping Romance Alive When Life Gets in the Way. first appeared on Jennifer S. White.

This week has been one of the worst weeks of my life.

I say that dramatically, and even as it really feels like this in places of my body that hurt, like my neck from tension, and my heart from the times I didn’t control my temper well enough with my kids, I know it’s not true. I’ve had weeks that were much, much worse than this past week.

But this week was still hard.

I’m sitting on my front porch reading a memoir about a woman backpacking alone. It reminds me viscerally of my former life as a backpacker; of my life when I was childless and living with my boyfriend (now husband) out West, when backpacking was a normal part of our life.

This humid cloud of July heat hangs over my white rocking chair, as I move myself back and forth and read this other woman’s words. Her story, though nothing like my own, still recalls fully the sensations of blistered feet, and working lungs and leg muscles, and, mostly, that particular feeling of complete exhaustion that hits mentally and physically after hiking so many miles up, up and up, until a plateau is reached, and the land levels off, and everything falls into a break before the next inevitable up-mountain battle begins.

She talks about “trail magic”. I remember this feeling, too.

“Trail magic” is when something beautiful and unexpected comes and contrasts completely with the often overwhelming exertion of hiking. My life right now has so much “trail magic”, although I haven’t strapped on a backpack in years.

Yesterday was the end of a long week with sick kids, and everything fun that they look forward to in the summer being cancelled because of their sickness, and of weather so hot that humid streaks of breath emanate visibly from the pavement up into the air.

Yesterday was the kind of day when I look at the clock and it’s only ten. And then it’s only eleven. And then it’s only three-thirty. And then it’s five o’clock, and I’m madly texting my husband to inquire when, for the love of God, he’ll be home. And then he walks through the door and my tired body barely grazes his in a kiss, as our children whine at his feet in their cabin-fever sick haze instead of at mine. I escape to the front porch. I sit in my white rocker and read. I hear them crying inside, and I hear him giving our youngest Tylenol. I hear him starting dinner while I take a break, as much for my tired and spent body as for my tired and spent mother heart.

And he’s had a long day at work, too. He’s had a hard, busy week. I’m not unsympathetic towards my quick escape, and our youngest daughter crying at everything from a bug outside of the window to a piece of lint that attached itself to her finger, because she feels so badly that she’s not really crying at these things anyways. But I exploded at the kids when they didn’t deserve it because this week was torturous and long and uneventful in the sweetest it-feels-like-Summer kind of way, while also feeling jail-like.

And then there was the “trail magic”.

There was the moment mid-week when my 21-month-old started calling me “Mama” instead of “Mommy”. She picked it up from friends visiting from Sweden the week before. My oldest, at first, told her no, that my name is Mommy. I said they don’t have to call me the same thing, so my 21-month-old says “Mama Mama Mama Mama Mama” over and over again partly to whine my name because she feels like crap, and mainly to roll it around in her mouth and test out my new nickname.

There was the time when my feverish daughter came up behind me while I was getting her something to drink, and she kissed my arm. I had silently felt so stressed I felt like I would vomit if I heard any more random tears or sibling fights over nothing worth fighting about. And then she kissed me, and she saw my body relax at her tender touch, and she pulled me down to her level and kissed me squarely on the mouth with her beautiful eyes less than an inch from mine.

Trail magic like this happens so often on my journey as a mother.

Motherhood doesn’t tax my muscles, and my lungs, and my spirit in the same ways that hiking for days at a time did. It taxes me in entirely different ways, all new each day, just like when I was a more avid outdoorswoman and I would feel like I had finally adjusted to the ground beneath my feet and the weight of the pack on my back, and then a new, steep switchback came into sight, and I nearly buckled from the daunting reality of it.

Motherhood and hiking are both physically demanding while also being distinctly “mind over matter.”

Just when I feel I’ve tackled an important situation for my children—the courageous mama bear who can and does do anything for her kids—a new one pops up. A new scary thing we must face together, because that’s what moms do: they provide the cushion of never having to do anything exactly alone. Except that, ultimately, we’re all all alone, so a mom also has to know when to step back and let her little ones sink or swim all by themselves.

Letting our kids go so they can traverse their own life’s journeys and have their own successes and failures is the hardest part of motherhood, and my kids are still so small that I really don’t have any idea of how hard this gets.

And when each year passes, like this next one when my oldest enters full-day school for the first time and I begin to cry simply thinking about it, I’ll remember that not one single step of this motherhood trek so far has been without trail magic.

Not one single day has flown by, or crept by, or trickled by, or sped by without my kids’ naturally wild, beautiful souls reminding me of why I started this journey of being a mama in the first place.

Some days might be good simply because I didn’t yell at someone. Some days might leave me feeling a bit like Supermom, after a day of my girls and I going to the zoo, and for ice cream, and inching the hot July days away underneath the shade of our gazebo tent out back, with crayons and juice boxes and coloring books on their Little Tikes picnic bench being the scenic backdrop of our life.

I am not a perfect mom. I don’t pretend to be. The path that I’m working my way through with my husband and our kids is like those Western singletracks that my boyfriend-now-husband and I used to walk on; knowing that others had plodded down this same path before, but the grass had again grown over in places, or trees had fallen down and we had to climb our own way over. The trail was new and fresh and all our own to carve in so many ways that made it both invigorating and terrifying.

There is no other journey on earth like parenthood.

There is no magic so intense and magnificent as that gifted by our kids.

The post The “Trail Magic” of Motherhood. first appeared on Jennifer S. White.

On most days, parenting is all-consuming for me.

I’m not necessarily proud to admit it, but it’s true that there are too many days when I fall exhausted into the sofa after we’ve finally gotten our daughters to bed, and I have to nearly force myself to want to spend time with my husband, rather than just vegetate with wine and Netflix episodes of Gilmore Girls. There are too many nights when I do “fail,” and we do just veg out, with wine and TV.

I don’t feel like a failure in my marriage, but I can’t help wishing I was more of the breezily sexy, well-slept unicorn-mother from Gilmore Girls than the easier sitcom-fodder of a mom—grumpy and barking orders, with tired rings around her eyes; messy hair in a bun.

I care deeply about my femininity, as I’ve learned to individually claim it. I’m passionate about marking my thoughts and needs with firm, red-penned lines. I love myself. I exercise daily and enjoy putting on makeup and kind-of-cute clothes, even when I know that my biggest outings will likely be meeting the school bus at the edge of my driveway before I make lunch.

I don’t ever want to become the sort of individual who lets my own health, interests and joy fall to the wayside because of work or child-rearing, and yet it happens because, conversely, I don’t want to become the self-focused narcissist who can’t transition towards the stark realities of aging, or, most importantly, that I’m cocooned inside of this period of my life where others—namely my children—truly do matter more than myself.

We are parents raising tiny, vulnerable human beings, and they physically need us now when they’re small, and they’ll still emotionally need us—and the safety of our boundaries–even as they grow.

Lately I’ve been too rigid about what I’m expecting from my husband while we jointly navigate this totally glorious, and equally difficult, time of our lives—when we raise two kids under the age of five.

I had this semi-aha moment—semi because it wasn’t exactly new, but I had a flash when I was mentally able to crawl outside of my cave of Goldfish crackers smashed into the carpet—and I realized that he’s working as hard as I am to be a good person, much less a good parent. (Duh.)

We need to cut each other more slack. We need to remember to create the time to be in love, too.

Recently while writing, I recalled something special about “us” from our early years of dating. I was looking at an old photograph, and suddenly it slipped away that he had pissed me off that morning during our coffee-and-toast-making routine.

My unnecessary anger fell to the floor with those Goldfish crumbs, and I was loving-wife goo wishing that my husband was next to me as I sat typing, instead of at work while I waited for him to get home, after having a long day with our kids.

Yet parenting is consuming, and it’s only because we love our children. We’re all just trying our best to keep them healthy and thriving, and to keep ourselves thriving, too. Sometimes, however, someone’s needs have to give.

Romantic relationships aren’t always 50/50. More authentically, they vacillate—one day being 10/90 and the next being 80/20. And if romance isn’t expected to float along on a plateau of 50/50, then it’s even more widely accepted that these early years of the parent-child relationship should never attain to be anything besides what they are: parents raising an initially dependent child.

I do look forward to future years together, when our kids are more independent, and we have more times for ourselves as individuals, much less as a couple. This said, life is cruel and, frankly, shit happens. I don’t want to put all of our happiness on hold, because we never know what will happen. (Perhaps pessimistic, but true nonetheless.)

I have no desire to end up being one of those couples that have forgotten why we’re friends, let alone lovers.

So, we nurture our relationship as best as we’re currently able. This means showing love in possibly less romantic ways than was expected before we had our two daughters.

It means that he brings home my favorite Sicilian sausage from the grocery store for dinner, despite the fact that he doesn’t even like sausage.

It means he stops and gets cash out for our daughter’s gymnastics lesson so that I don’t have to cart the kids to the bank.

Real love simplifies. It becomes making toast and coffee for him in the morning, or leaving him alone in the bathroom when all I really want to do is get in there and put on some mascara.

It means that we decide to flip off Gilmore Girl, and kiss.

I’m not suggesting that we throw away date nights, or stop trying to find great babysitters, but these activities should be treats for an already happy marriage, not how we’re staying connected with each other.

We need to talk—every day.

We need to stop demanding what we can’t give now.

We need to open our tired eyes enough to see this love that’s right here, in between diaper changes and getting to the school bus on time.

The post When Romance Begins with Cutting Some Slack. first appeared on Jennifer S. White.

I can’t give you the birthday gift that I want to.

I would give you time alone together, and a perfectly picked-up house.

I would give you a quiet dinner in that new restaurant that serves tacos and rum. I would give you a weekend in bed, and a day for the two of us.

I know you don’t want this, though.

You do want time for us to remember why we fell in love, when it seems your wife has wandered away and been replaced by a grumpier, growling version of the cuter, loving, strong picturesque mama bear. You might want to live in a house more evenings with that woman I once was more easily, before I became a mother—but you want our kids and all that they bring into our lives.

The baby has been walking around, singing happy birthday for at least a week. Our oldest is prepped, and ecstatic, and ready to give you the gift that she picked out, and to help make your chocolate cake.

Kids are reminders of the sheer joy and magic that birthdays gift to us, when older people can forget—seeing them merely as another candle.

I wish I could have planned a sexier celebration, for after our kids go to bed; after we get to have them sing with us, and give you your presents, and enjoy this day of honoring you. (But you know as well as I do that the baby has been difficult to get to sleep these last two weeks, and that plans these days are sometimes met, and more typically left behind and replaced with an unexpected one—such is life with kids.)

So, instead, I’ll give you a chocolate cake, and a few wrapped items.

I’ll give you a dinner that sounds good, most likely made in our kitchen, and I’ll sing to you with these girls and their sweet voices.

I’ll give you a house that stays clutter free for, optimistically, 10 minutes. I’ll give you alone time in the bathroom, without me calling through the door, asking when I can get in.

I’ll give you a day when you remember that you’re loved, and not just part of a tired tag-team that tries to get through an evening. I’d like to tell you that there won’t be screaming at the dinner table, or whining before bed, but another thing about kids and birthdays is that—when they’re small—they are only so capable of understanding that this isn’t a “normal” day.

I’ll put an extra candle on your cake—in addition to your year-older one—for a good-luck wish, and I’ll hope you blow out your candles and enter the best year of your life yet.

I hope you remember that we are a team, and that I’m your partner, when it feels like nearly all of our energy is devoted to this little family that we’re raising, and not just to being in love.

I’ll hope you remember that you are loved—greatly—and that I want your wishes to come true, and, more than anything, that I want to be right here holding your hand, and making your chocolate cakes, and singing in front of additional candles for many more birthdays ahead.

The post A Happy Birthday to My Husband as We Raise Little Kids. first appeared on Jennifer S. White.

The greatest truth of motherhood:

The bus stops across the street to let our neighbor’s kids off, and it’s late enough that I’m already thinking about what we’ll have for dinner. Next year, my daughter will be on that bus.

Transitioning a child to full-day school is something that I haven’t done yet. Instead, I lie on the cusp—seeing this huge shift waiting ahead for us, and coming at vicious speed. (I imagine myself spread across train tracks in an old-timey movie.)

The difference is that, in real life, there are no villains. None. My daughter will, almost assuredly, love school. (She already shows signs of readiness this year, like how she’s often bored at home with me and her little sister during our afternoons.)

I still don’t want to let her go.

I try to remain present in this limited time that I share with her. I remind myself of logical things, like that it’s not even March. Regardless, I’m transported back to those days with her as a baby, when she was my only child.

She makes these faces sometimes, and they look exactly the same as when she was tinier. I see—almost over-top of her face as in a double image—her baby-self, making the same shape with her mouth, or the look in her eye catches me by surprise, and—for a moment!—it could be a few years ago, when she was newer to this Earth.

I’m nearly positive that I’ll have a similar experience with her baby sister. I can’t help looking at my youngest differently than I did my oldest when she was that age, because now I know better. I know to study a few of her expressions, and to chisel them onto my heart, and to pause and just take in her babyhood before it’s over.

I’m not a crier, and I’ve cried or teared up multiple times in these last two days, thinking of my daughter going to kindergarten. I remember, too, a yoga-studio friend sitting on her mat next to mine in class three years ago, and she was crying in the dimly lit light because it was her youngest’s first day of kindergarten. I felt sympathy for her, but that ache felt far off for me. (How foolish.)

One day, I’ll be a mother, like these sweet ones I talk to now, that tell me how they remember, and that they understand the emotions, and that it will be okay.

Will it?

I can never go backwards, and I don’t want to. I love watching my children grow, but it’s just that I observe my own parents’ faces each week when they visit, and I know that one day I will relate to their awareness that life doesn’t last for forever, that these years with our brand-new, little families are never long enough, and that taking this time to pause and appreciate giggles, and all of the “firsts” is more important than anything else in the world.

I know that this ache will soften. Probably similar to the start of this pre-school year, when I would wave to her getting on the bus, with a fake, happy grin, and then sob as soon as she couldn’t see me. Those tears would fall as I walked up the sidewalk to our house. Somewhere, however, in a few months, that smile for her became genuine—and I became okay.

I will be okay. But I do need to pause more, among these notorious little-kid difficulties of toileting, and the tiresomeness of getting kids in and out of booster seats, and car seats, and juggling texting someone back with the baby simultaneously whining to be held, or my oldest handing me a book to read for the three-millionth time that hour.

I need to find the romance of these sometimes long days, because there’s never been a greater truth of being a mother than that these years are short.

The post The Only Thing I Need to Remember When These Days of Mothering Feel Long. first appeared on Jennifer S. White.