Dear Lydia,

When your kids are grown up and you are sitting on Facebook (or whatever there is in the future) or talking in person, to a stressed out new mom. Please remember this letter to yourself (written by you, currently a stressed out new mom.)

Dear Lydia,
DO NOT be the lady who says: "It goes by so fast." "I miss those days." "They grow up and leave you." "Just wait until they are teenagers." "If you think this is hard..."

Just say something nice.
Like "It gets easier."
"You will sleep someday, I promise."
"Its amazing to watch them grow up."


If you absolutely cannot help yourself from getting nostalgic, try to say it without the bittersweet edge of pain.
Something like, "I know its hard now, but I look back on those days with such joy. You'll get through them and they will so deeply enrich you."


I find nothing encouraging in hearing "It goes by so fast." "They grow up and leave you." bla bla bla.
It just piles HEAPS of guilty on top of my-haven't-slept-well-in years-(literally-years) head. It sounds like "Suck it up because this is as good as it gets. And you are missing it."


Also, on a related note:

Dear me right now,
I'm going to pretend I can look back in time and talk to you from a place where I actually get sleep without worrying I'll just get reawakened, and I can get some alone time, where I can spend 10 mins without people crawling on my body. I'm going to pretend that I actually know what I think I might just know.
Here goes:

Dear 30 year old Lydia,
I think you are doing great.
And you are right. You are not a small-person person. (We both know you love your own small-people to the ends of the universe despite the facts. But we also know that's not what I'm talking about.) You like babies. And you really like bigger kids who have logical means to converse with. But small people are definitely not your cup of tea.
And that's ok.
You are your kids cup of tea. And so even on the days where you are just pressing through with only the steam of your coffee in your way to hungry breastfeeding gut, they think you are going on so much more.  (Thats why they ask so much of you. They have no idea you are struggling. To them you are championing.)
You are doing fine.
When you get through this, you are gonna wish you didn't worry so much about if they watched too much TV, or didn't round out their diet enough, or had enough specified learning time with you. You are gonna wish you took more pictures. And wrote more poems. You are gonna wish pressed the baby's breath with the ways you like to remember. You are gonna wish you really lived.
You aren't gonna be mad if really living didn't look the same for you as it did for your peers. (When have you ever really been like your peers, anyway?) You are gonna be pleased that you made it work.
And oh how you made it work. Despite all the things you never saw coming, you just rolled with the punches. Yeah you whined sometimes. Yeah you cried. Yeah you ached. But you rolled all the same. And I am impressed. Standing back here and seeing where you were and where you go. You did good, kid.

Gown women with grown children can look back on their babies as babies with such love because they can see the grown up in the baby. And they just want to be able to hug their kids all day long again. But They really don't want to stay up all night. Just ask women who see movies about grandmas having kids the same time as their daughter (Father of the Bride the sequel) most moms will say, "I just wanna be a grandma right now. I want to send them home with mom at the end of the day." Its hard work momming small people. I think that's part of why God lets them grow up. So moms don't just burn right out of existence.
Its ok if you like that your kids grow -- guess what -- they will if you like it or not -- so you might as well like it! :)

Thats all for now --
because, actually, its still really 30 year old me writing -- and my girls are literally running around naked.

So hey -- older me -- just remember -- spread happy thoughts, not wistful ones. Wistful ones don't help anyone be happy, just worried. Happy thoughts help make happy thoughts!

Lydia out.