stages, the short and long of it

(I had three great ideas for a blog last night and didn't write them down. Shooting myself in the foot here!)

It's only been a few days since I last wrote but it feels much longer. I guess writing my blog does as much for me as maybe it does for you.  Last week was quite possibly the busiest week of my life.  From the time I got up to 18 hours later when my head finally hit the pillow, I was busy.  But with a few tired and desperate cries out to God for help and with the support of my understanding family, I made it through last week to this one.

So even though I forgot all my good ideas, I do have this that I pondered earlier today: childhood stages.  You see when we had our first child and struggled through the different phases, it was easy to get stuck on how frustrating that stage was: getting the newborn to sleep through the night, teeth making a crabby baby, potty training a 3 year old, getting a 4 year old to stay in her bed.  

I had a dear friend who gave me some advice that I clung onto through those first years.  She told me that all these things are just stages.  You will get through them.  They won't last forever.  You will not end up with a high schooler who is not potty trained.  Eventually all their teeth will grow in.  And sooner rather than later you'll have trouble getting them out of bed instead of in!  

All of this was good and fine and truly helped me to understand that there would be an end to my frustrations.  But I did some other valuable calculations today...sort of.

I plan on living to 100.  I spent the first 20 years growing up.  We had kids around the mid-20's.  We will probably spend approximately 21 years raising these two.  Then we get old for the next 50 + years.  Now I plan on doing some awesome stuff when I get old so I'm not disappointed in that.  But that means that I will only do this whole "raising kids" thing for about 1/5 of my life.  That's not very long.  

It's a stage in my life, perhaps the most valuable stage.  And eventually it will be gone.  So I've made a conscious decision to try hard not to waste this time. I only have one chance to raise each kid and I want to make it count.  

There are some stages that I am happy to see pass (there was one portion of potty training that was a doozy!)  But I'm going to cherish this overall stage of my life because I will be sad when it is over.  Let me just tell you that when the empty nest becomes a reality, I will be a wreck!! But I have also have spent time building a relationship with this husband of mine so that when that happens I won't be alone...but that's a blog for another day!  I guess I should go write that idea down before I forget again...

KC