That’s not very long from now. There’s plenty to do, but at the same time, we’ve been through it before so it’ll be fine.
In all of the final preparations for the new one, I hadn’t stopped to reflect on Olivia in a few months. I still have this mindset of parenting as this incredibly difficult thing. All of the old things: “Sleep is so crazy”, “Always so tired.”, “Blah blah blah.”
Sure, sleep is never going to be quite what it was pre-Olivia (nor will it be anything like what it was pre-marriage, truth be told), but it has normalized. I’ve adapted to the reality that I’ll probably always be tired until after the first cup of coffee in the morning.
Olivia, though, is an absolute charm. If I don’t shift my mentality out of the past into the present, I risk missing out on quite a bit.
Her football signals have grown to the point where V thinks it has migrated from cute to borderline weird (touchdown, safety, no-good/incomplete pass, first down, touchback, offsides, holding, false start, facemask, and most recently, delay of game). Her vocab is not as diverse–a few animal sounds, “dada”, “birrr” (basically the same word that she uses for bird and ball), “boo” and, maybe as of today, “mama”.
She does what she’s told–put away her toys each night, help with her diaper changes (throwing away her creations). She has very strong and vocal feelings about the foods she want at each meal, which TV show she wants to watch (she has a very limited TV allowance), which parent she wants and about everything else.
She’s incredibly independent (most of the time). I’ve seen parents do the “okay, I’m walking this way… you can do what you want” while on a walk. By plan, after a few feet, the kid becomes fearful and runs back to the parent, right? Not Olivia. She’s made it about half a block before I give in and run after her. I don’t know how much of a good thing that is for a 16-month old, but I digress.
Over the past 16 months, we’ve had to adjust quite a bit. But, in the end, the “worst” of it has been long over.
Leave a Reply