Now that I have a couple of years of this "mommy" thing under my belt, this is a little of what I know. I am a freaking expert on raising an 18 month old Sammy. I do ok on the 18-22 month old Sammy. A 26 month old Sammy? I'm about a 50% expert. In a couple of months, though, I would so rock at the 26 month old Sammy. Everything else, I don't know. I'll become an expert after several months or years have passed. And that's ok. Because no one else is an expert in Sammy, either. Isaac and I figure it out as we go. I ask questions, gather opinions and in the end we make it through another day and cross off another rung on the ladder of expertise. It's the job I dreaded for so long and something more blissful than I could have ever imagined all wrapped up in a messy, sloppy bow.
I do wonder why, though, when someone is having a hard mommy day, we feel the need to respond with cliches and things that we all know. Why don't we respond with "I know it sucks" and let them vent instead of "children are a blessing" or "you have to treasure this time because it goes so quickly"? I am assuming that we all know that we love our children more than we can say. We all know how fast it goes and that it can be taken at any moment. I also assume that we all know our kids are blessings. I mean, I sometimes look at Sammy and well up because I cannot believe I get to be his mom. I have a great kid who picks up trash on his own and is kind and funny and so unflinchingly sweet it knocks the wind out of me. I know about being blessed with a kid. I know about not knowing what I wanted for so long and then falling into this crazy web of motherhood and hating it and loving it and kicking and screaming and the whole mess of it all.
The more seasoned moms - do they forget about the days that sucked? Do they forget that even though you love your kid and would tear someone up who looked twice at them, somedays you crawl into the fetal position and secretly wonder why, again, you chose this? I guess I can't blame them for either forgetting those days or just ignoring them. They are in a damned both ways situation. We either get mad at them for giving us advice or we ignore them and TELL them they've forgotten how hard it is. I wish we listened more. I wish we were all a little more honest. I wish we talked more about the hard stuff. And I really wish women wouldn't be so hard on one another.
