Six Years and Counting.

I have been a parent for over six years now.  Not very long compared to some, but the beginning is oh so exhausting.  Children are born with nothing but needs.  At first most of those needs are physical and then evolve to emotional and structural.  

I'm still wading in the mostly physical end right now and I'm tired.  I want to sleep through the night again.  Take a bath (without visitors) with a book and a glass of wine.  Shop alone.  Use the bathroom alone! 

Parent after parent warns me over and over that everything goes by too fast.  That you blink and they are graduating school.  And I don't want to be in a hurry for my babies to grow up.  I want to soak in these days of snack time and midnight rocking.  I know that I will miss them.  I can feel deep in my heart that I will ache a little when these days are done.  

On the other side of that though is a never ending struggle to accomplish anything besides the needs of the children.  At this point I have my own needs that wander outside of diapers and nursing.  I need to do things in my own areas of interest.  And I can do them, but there seems to be a cost.  It requires so much effort to carve out the time and the space to do something that I want to do.  

It will get easier.  And harder I'm told.  We'll go from learning to walk and potty training to running all over for activities and dealing with lies and attitudes.  However, right now all I can dream about is a life that doesn't revolve around nap time.