It was so stinkin' easy. One kid.
It made me think back to when Nathan was that age and I only had one kid. Did it feel easy? No. Was I incorrect at that time for thinking one kid was hard? No. It's just that my perspective has changed.
Just like if a mom of four only has two kids at home for a day or two. Those two kids would seem so easy compared to the four.
Luke missed Nathan while he was gone so I ended up playing some home videos of Nathan and looked at some pictures on the computer. Seeing pictures of Nathan when he was Luke's age brought back all sorts of memories and the doubts that sometimes flooded my head back then.
Nathan, a little over 1 year old
(first oreo experience)
Luke watching videos of Nathan
I think with our first child in some ways we don't quite feel validated as a parent yet. We haven't proved ourselves yet. We haven't experienced enough mommy moments to think "yeah, I got this." We want things to be perfect and sometimes feel bad when they aren't.
I think with the second (and third and fourth) kid we let a lot of that go. We know we are capable of parenting. We loosen up some.
Now, of course there are moments when we feel overwhelmed and incapable. But God designed motherhood to be like that. If we never felt that way we wouldn't turn to Him and lean on Him to sustain us. We can't do it alone.
It can be so easy to look at a mom with only one child and think "girl, you don't know how easy you've got it! I have ____ kids running around at home. One is easy peasy"...but we must not forget. We must hang onto the memory of when we were that. When one kid was hard.
It's good for our perspective to change. Yet we can't completely let go of what it was before.
I wrote a really similar post a while back. I agree!
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