On Parenthood

You go through so many emotions as a parent, every single day. As though parenting itself (the actual actions required) isn't hard enough — and along with managing/dealing with/ignoring/coping with the bevy of emotions your child(ren) goes through — the emotional roller coaster it puts you on can be a doozy. In the course of one day, you can feel extreme love and devotion because your kid is astonishingly witty and smart and the prettiest thing you've ever seen, or you can feel like your head will literally explode if you hear her speak in that wretched baby voice one more time. And probably a hundred other emotions in between.

And it changes on you fast. One minute, you're on your way to find out why it's taking your child 20 minutes to brush her teeth, ready to really throw down, only to find that she has been busy writing "I love you Mom" on a post-it note and sticking it to the mirror. I just had to swallow that lecture and give her a hug instead. The lows are rough, but the highs are magical.

For the past few days, Anna has been in a sort of clingy/shadow phase. Most of the time, she is very capable of entertaining herself for a while. But the last few days, if she's not incessantly asking, "What can I do, Mom, what can I do?" while I'm trying to get something done, she's yapping and hanging on my clothes pretending to be a frisky puppy or blowing a kazoo in my face. I have had to practice much patience.

Those times are taxing, but they're not the only emotions you go through. The other day at the park, I felt like I was on the Colossus of emotions (for you Lagoon fans out there). I felt such sheer joy in her suggestion that we roll down a steep hill together, glad that she was instigating this adventure. I felt like a success for teaching her to enjoy the total freedom and abandonment and fun that comes from rolling down hills. I was proud when she wanted to take charge and take us on a walk and choose every path we went down. I laughed with her when she confidently pointed her walking stick and said, "Onway! Thisward! I mean, onward!" I marveled that I could laugh with her, that she is old enough to laugh at things like this. I didn't have a lot of time to dwell on that, though, because pretty soon she was running toward me with a pouty lower lip after going down the slide. She held out her hand and showed me a scrape and told me how an older boy was trying to climb up the slide when she was sliding down and he accidentally stepped on her hand. I went from feeling a sense of calm so that she would learn to brush things off, distress that she really could have gotten hurt, impatience with the older boy for stepping on someone, to flat-out panic that she might get gout or something when she promptly licked her scrape "to get the white away." Blech.

Later she saved me a green skittle because she knows green is my favorite color. Maybe it's silly to get all mushy about a green skittle, but my heart sings when she does stuff like this, when I see that she's old enough to pay attention to other people and she willingly, knowingly does thoughtful things. It's times like these that make me think, "What have I done to deserve this?" But I think you know you're a parent when you ask this question both in times of frustration and times of joy — and probably 50 times a day either way.