One of the most insightful pieces of early parenting advice I’ve received is the realization that we often rely on lots of built-in rules, the tricks we keep in our back pockets to use day after day after day…until we don’t. Routine and normalcy have a shelf life of what, two weeks? We push the crying baby in a stroller around the kitchen island and take turns shoveling food into our mouths at dinnertime… until we don’t. We hold her head up as we bathe her gently in the sink… until we don’t. We swear by the sound machine and the pack-and-play and the swaddling blankets and the mobile and the stuffed animals and the lullabies and the endless bedtime routine… until we don’t.
Because as soon as we learn the rules to the game, they change. And we can’t remember that those rules ever existed, that we ever knew how to play that old game of newborn-calming and baby-wearing and infant-nursing.
Right now, we live by lots of rules – the one where the bath toys have to be lined up just so before we dry off. The graham cracker in both hands rule. The always boots rule. The dogs in the sunroom while we eat rule.
And I feel them slipping. I sense the change that’s coming – one that signals a new tide of toddler preferences and nuances, a new set of “rules” surrounding each.
But for today, in this very moment? This is a game I know how to play.
Yes!! There’s nothing in my life that has made me so adaptable and creative as keeping up with the toddler “rules.” Our current rule, that I broke to a very angry crying this morning, is that he wants to walk up and down the stairs to say bye-bye to Da-da-dog-dog ON HIS OWN. Slowly. While I’m trying to get us out the door to daycare and work and the rest of the day… = )
HAAAAAAAA. The BEST.
So. True.
Where on earth did you get that headband. AND do they have adult sizes?
It’s from Pom Berlin – isn’t it a cutie?: http://pomberlin.bigcartel.com/product/hairband-pompom
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. Suddenly naps need to start in the stroller. Suddenly she doesn’t want to be rocked to sleep. We get our system down, and then things change and we need to navigate the new. But then some changes need to be made from the outside (thinking about weaning off the pacifier this week). I don’t know when the next change will be but for now I’m focusing on catching up to the present :)
Ha, I totally hear you! :)
This post rings very true with me – my SP is a few months older than your beautiful Bee… We need to have something in both hands when eating most of the time at our house too. SP is always saying; ” ‘Nother won” if she only has one cookie (or cracker) in her hand.
As for the rest – I can remember thinking certain stages that would never end – but now I can’t remember exactly when they ended or even for how long they lasted… wow. Just trying to enjoy the ride!
Ha, it’s such a fun one, isn’t it? :)