Missed Milestones

Back in late December I accidentally let two pretty big milestones pass by without a mention.  My Christmas Eve post marked #2000 for this blog, and on December 27th, the blog officially turned 15!  I'm not quite sure how it's possible, but here we are a decade and a half in with over 2,000 rounds of documenting memories and deep philosophical thoughts.  This started on such a whim, simply wanting somewhere to share updates with out-of-town friends and family and remember the tiny details of pregnancy, and now I've been writing about life and parenthood for nearly a third of my life.  While I never had a planned stopping point, I could never have imagined at the time I'd be doing it all these years later.  These days it's mostly more for myself than others.  I'm so grateful for all of the details I've recorded here, how I can look back and remember lots of little moments or look up milestones whose timing I can't recall.  Parenthood is a massive blur and it's always interesting to read back and remember things I forgot.

I remember doing posts once in a while in the past where I looked at all of the posts from the same time period in previous years and recalled where we were each year previously.  I did that again before writing this post--all 15 years of mid-to-late January--and it blew my mind how many years I had to look through!  What was once a handful of recollections is now more than a dozen, and the variety and the similarities were equally fascinating.  A lot of it made me grateful for the relative lull we have going on right now.  It covered two rounds of baby prep and pregnancy side effects, two funerals (my uncles), two Bills playoff losses (right on time for a third a couple weeks ago), two rounds of first basketball games (one per kid), two surgeries (both Jacob's), one surgery prep (Carter), one round of pregnancy attempt issues (trying for #2), and LOTS of illness--strep, ear infections, colds, stomach bugs.  There were also good things, like two trips to Toronto, our family sledding day a couple years ago, spending time with Carter during my unemployment, and some really adorable pictures and videos of the boys as babies and toddlers.  It's so amazing how many of those posts bring back forgotten details and still-vivid memories, and how it seems nearly impossible that so much time has gone by since those things happened.  I have these two giant children now who bear a mere passing resemblance to those babies.  It's so hard to fathom that we're rapidly approaching the last phase of in-home parenting for one kid, and what started as the early very beginnings of our family's story has now documented so much of it, almost by accident.  

In many ways it's a relief to be past so many of those little kid challenges.  I know most older parents insist that big kid problems are worse than little kid problems, and yes, in retrospect fretting over sippy cups or naps or solid foods seems silly compared to big kid challenges and decisions that can have life-altering impacts.  It may be hard, but I still find myself quite relieved those days are over.  Maybe it's just because adding those complications to anything we deal with now seems like way too much to process, but those days felt so confusing and exhausting and endless, usually made worse by some sort of sleep deprivation.  I remember the desperation some of those posts were written with, and I don't miss that.  I miss those babies, but not the super dependent parts of their babyhood and the endless parade of questions and problems as we navigated early parenthood.  Big kid stuff is hard and complicated (and expensive!), but I still don't think I'd trade it for the little kid stuff again.  Been there, done that, appreciated the experience, and happy to have moved on to "different hard".

I will say that seeing all of those January illness posts is good perspective for now, especially as we navigate a period where someone is sick every other week--but I'll take the endless colds (despite the COVID scares) over stomach bugs, sleep-disrupting ear infections, and strep on repeat any day.  Those were hard days--getting a last minute doctor appointment, struggling through the Wegmans trip to get medication, and then heading back home for dinner and a long night with a sick and cranky kid.  Or the middle-of-the-night puke sessions followed by a work day on two hours of sleep.  Or the agony that was watching Carter's sleep apnea and tonsil surgery, or the uncertainty of Jacob's bone cyst and subsequent leg surgery.  I appreciate those experiences now for the ways they pushed me as a parent, but I am happy they were able to be left in our rear view mirror. 

I'm grateful for the perspective the bad stuff provides, even the painful-to-read posts that remind me just how hard things were.  It takes my breath away to read them sometimes, but it's good to have a reminder that things can and did get better, even if it's still not perfect.  I still get a little sad reading the posts that mention my hope that Jacob would be a good big brother, because that never really did happen and we've lost nearly 10 years of brotherly love that we'll never get back.  There are moments, but I worry my kids will never have the bond I've always wanted them to have because their foundation has always been shaky and competitive at best.  I had so much hope for them, and it's sad that it never worked out.  

But even more than the bad stuff are the memories I've preserved of the good things--the fun trips, cute memories, little captured moments we'd have never remembered otherwise.  Despite all the challenges, there have been enjoyable and rewarding moments, and I love that I can go back and relive them in some form with just a couple clicks.  It's so easy for all of those early phases to become a blur, even with photo evidence--sometimes you just lose the context and forget why that picture was important.  And the more memories you make, I suppose the easier it is for all of them to crowd each other out.  But all I have to do is pick a day and I can go back to a moment I haven't thought about in years.  It's actually a pretty incredible time machine I've made myself.  I had no idea that's what I'd be doing for future me, but if I could, I'd go back and hug myself for doing it.  My parents talk about how me scanning their photo albums was the best gift I could have ever given them, and I feel much the same way about the blog for myself.  The trove of digital photos I have is a huge treasure as well, but I love that this blog gives them context and stories that I might not have remembered otherwise.  Not that my kids would ever care, but if they did wonder about some memory, more than likely it would be here somewhere.  It's a pretty special thing to have.  

I think hitting 15 years just reminds me how fast this has all gone, because I still vaguely remember sitting down to write that first post.  I was a completely different person when this began--newly pregnant and nervous, but naive and oblivious to so much of what the future might hold. Had I known some of the things we'd deal with I'm not sure I'd have had the guts to go through with it.  I don't always like the person I am now--I'm sometimes too angry and jaded and exhausted, to the point of missing the humor or small joys in a situation.  But I'm also stronger and more compassionate and less judgmental.  Having tough kids made me realize that we can only do so much.  We can give it our all and still screw up, or we can be amazing parents and our kids will still make decisions that we can't control or understand.  It's a reminder that everyone has a story, and some are more complicated than others.  Maybe that person in Target really is a terrible parent, but most of the time I remind myself that they're probably not and the kid is probably just having a moment.  Or maybe the parent does suck, but is still doing their best and it's just not working.  This is the hardest gig there is and the least we can do is stop judging one another without knowing where we've all come from.  I don't know that I would have learned that lesson had I not been "that mom" in Target or in the parent-teacher conference over and over again.

So much of this current period of parenthood feels like I have worked so hard to get to this point.  The maturity I feel compared to that new mom I once was, the ease with which I feel like I can give at least some token parenting advice, the relief I feel with being through some of the hard stages...none of it came easily and it feels like a true, hard-fought victory to be at the stage I'm at.  I'm grateful to be past the endless baby gear, the full-on dependent stages, the constant worries of babyproofing, solid foods, food allergies, long crying spells, and thankless exhaustion.  I know I have mentally challenging stages coming, too, but I'm savoring this little plateau I'm at for the moment.  

The days are long but the years are short, as they say, and I've gotten through it all one blog post at a time.  Sometimes it was making memories, sometimes it was therapy.  It was the one place I could always go to talk myself through something, put the frustration into words, get things straight in my head, and get it out of my system so I could stop ruminating.  Sometimes it felt like all I could do to process the hard times and refocus.  I've probably saved myself a lot of years of therapy...although my very clear account of our troubles over the years is probably what convinced me we needed various rounds of therapy in the first place.  We probably still do from time to time, but we're hanging in there about a year after we stopped it.  Have I been too honest at times?  Maybe.  Jacob and I talked about some of what was here a few years ago when an old friend told me I was a terrible parent for being so public about our struggles on Facebook.  (Side note: She became an insta-parent of an almost-teen last year and I'd bet some of her thoughts have changed based on what she posts now!  Sometimes you just need solidarity with other teen parents, no?)  While I'm not sure Jacob fully grasped how in-depth it is, he seemed okay with the honesty and rawness I told him was here.  Maybe my kids will be mortified someday, maybe they'll hate me for things I said in hard moments, but I hope they see how much I loved them and how desperately I wanted to do the right thing.  Motherhood and this blog have both been labors of love in their own ways.  Maybe this blog did go down a path that was too honest and too public (even if almost no one reads it), but I got to various points where I didn't want to sugarcoat (like so much social media) and I wanted to be honest with myself, as well.  If I looked back on this and knew I was lying or covering up, that would feel awful and disingenuous, and render this blog nearly pointless.  So I let it all out, appreciated the emotional outlet, and documented both the struggles and the victories.  I wish there were more of the latter, but I still think we've done pretty darn good considering some of the cards we were dealt.  We're blessed in so many ways, but oh, it's been a white-knuckle ride much of the way.

Most days I still don't feel up to this job.  I was so nervous from the moment I got pregnant, and 15 years later, some days I'm more confused than ever.  But this blog has been a reminder that we make it through.  It makes me look for the joys and see the growth.  It reminds me how fast time goes and how far we've come.  We still have some tough stages ahead, and God willing, I'll blog through those too.  But 15 years and 2,000 posts is one heck of an accomplishment...and a gift to myself I will treasure forever.