Enjoying The Small Victories of Parenthood

Stay-at-home-parents rarely say the bad things about staying at home. Why? Because I think we feel judged about staying at home. Because we're "lucky" to stay home. Meh, I'm not so sure about that. If you water your own grass you'll never need to want what's on the other side (or in my case, weeds, because we don't use pesticides. HA!).

And I completely forgot what it's like to parent an infant - the isolation, the REALLY LONG DAYS, the weird schedules, plus now throw a 4 year old into the mix and BAM our days are super weird. One child is in the phase where she NEEDS to get out of the house for activities and the other child is in the phase where he NEEDS to stay home to nap. Oy, parenting.

So Tuesday I just said, "FUCK IT ALL!!! We're going to the lake!"

And you know what...it was freaking awesome.

Chewbacca and I sat in the shade while The Monkey waded and played with sand toys. FOR TWO HOURS. TWO HOURS OF AWESOMENESS.

And I met another mom of two with the same age differences - the youngest was two - and she said the best words ever - IT GETS BETTER!!

I almost hugged her.

And no, I didn't take pictures. I was too busy watching another mom of two struggle with her children - and I couldn't do a fucking thing about it because I was busy feeding Chewbacca.

It was a moment where I realized that I used to be the mom that helped other moms. And that was amazing because when I struggled, there was always a mom-stranger to help me out, and then I was the mom-stranger to help out, and now I'm the one in need again. I can't wait to be the helper mom-stranger again.

But watching her I saw that she was a serious helicopter mom and would totally not even accept my help anyway. She was busy entertaining her toddler AND 7 month old AT THE SAME TIME. And I seriously mean helicoptering BOTH children. Doesn't that get tiring? Like a ping-pong ball bouncing back and forth. The Monkey was watching the toddler, waiting for the mom to leave her alone so The Monkey could play with her. And guess what...the toddler missed out on making a friend. I felt sad for the mom - we could have sat on our beach blankets together talking and drinking La Croix waters and watching our babies instead. Oh, well. Parenting isn't the same for everyone. Maybe next time the other mom will want to sit for a break.

So I decided to take my small parenting victory instead. When we got back to the car and I had it all packed up I totally did a fist pump. I had conquered the morning (unlike last night where it took 5 tries to get Chewy down for the night...but he slept from 9-7:15 so I really can't complain too much!).

So I'll just leave this with a picture of the two goons.