I think you might learn everything you need to know about my tendency to overextend myself if you know that last week I took my kids camping and brought along a puppy and a week-old kitten who needed to be bottle fed around the clock.
I love camping, but taking a camping trip with two young children when it doesn’t get dark until after 9 p.m., and starts getting light at 4:30 a.m. is not a recipe for good rest. Add in a wild puppy and a needy kitten and you’ve just made yourself a giant bowl of sleep-deprivation salad.
Sleep-deprivation salad? Only a severely sleep-deprived person would think of a metaphor that bizarre, but here we are. Apparently, two nights back in my own bed have not brought my brain fully back online. Meanwhile, as I write this I can hear the tiny kitten in the next room calling for his tiny bottle. Sigh.
It all feels very familiar. Tomorrow is my son’s birthday. He will be a whopping 8 years old. As predicted by many others, the days with babies and toddlers were long, but the years have been short. I can’t believe how big and independent he and his sister have become, especially with this little kitten to remind me what it was like to have tiny children not so very long ago.
It really is a different world now. This is the first summer we’ve instituted regular chores, and the kids do them with minimal prompting and no adult help at all. I remember worrying in years past that I was not doing a good job introducing order and self-discipline–that my kids wouldn’t know how to work hard and take pride in their accomplishments.
Now, watching them trot off to the coop together, egg basket in hand, or telling them to weed a garden bed and coming out later to find it done, I comfort my past self for all the fretting. “The kids are ok,” I tell that worried younger mother who still sometimes hovers around the edges of my thoughts.
Yes, the feeling of sleep deprivation and being needed constantly is a familiar one, but save for this kitten who will outgrow his tiny-ness far faster than my human children did, the days of being that kind of mother are over for me. I could lament this fact, but honestly, thank goodness! I don’t know how I did it back then, and I can’t imagine doing it again right now. That week of camping felt like it might end me.
And yet, during our week away, I got to have a quick visit with a dear friend who has 3-and-half-month-old twins (in addition to a not-quite 3-year-old). I expected to find her exhausted and depleted, but instead, she was absolutely glowing. Her babies have the delightful, fat dimpled thighs, tiny, delicate fingernails, and the fluffy, angel-soft hair that are as marvelous and awe-inspiring as they are nearly universal in babies that young. It’s hard not to feel joyful in their presence–babies really are magic. And, my friend has had a lot of help from family, other friends, and neighbors. She was unabashed in celebrating how all that help has allowed her to enjoy her twins in a way she couldn’t with her first baby when she and her husband did most of the heavy lifting alone.
It was a good reminder that child-rearing really isn’t something we are meant to do alone. My babies are growing up, which means it’s my turn to snuggle someone else’s babies so they can take a shower or drink a cup of tea.
Bring me your babies, is what I am saying! I am here for the snuggles! And also I need a nap. So maybe bring me your babies next week. I need a little more time to recover, and then I will snuggle them and you can have your turn to take a rest.
