1. You need to travel a lot when untethered to children. Now, if we were sane and had a smaller family maybe we would or could travel more often. But, we are not a small, world trippin' family. No regrets--just sayin'.
2. Your marriage changes the moment you learn you're pregnant. Well, it did for us. Why I thought this would not happen I simply attribute to blissful ignorance.
3. It really does get easier. At least until the girls hit the tween years.
4. You won't go back and fill in the baby book later. To make matters worse, I completely lost kid #4's book until just recently. Did I mention she's 4? Oops. In fact, I had convinced myself that I had never bought one. Talk about mommy guilt. And an empty book to boot. On to a related note...
5. You won't remember everything about your daily life, baby days, funny things they say, etc. as you think you would. Write it down. It will make for wonderful reminiscing later. I found a chart I created for my sister-in-law to follow when she babysat our then three kids ages 10 months, 25 months, and 4 1/2. That spreadsheet covered all the little but very important things like nap times, feeding details, bedtime routines, etc. Reading that brings me back to that time in a vivid way that I cherish.
Thanks for reading.
The baby book. I have been collecting photos of my nieces thinking I'll get them into an album. It has yet to happen - the oldest is 7. So should I just abandon the idea and put the best ones in frames?
ReplyDeleteAs for writing things down - that's what the Filo is all about my friend! ;)
Sandra, I totally hear ya about ALL 5 POINTS! Probably because we are in the same boat, LOL.
ReplyDeleteThat last one in particular is sooooo soooo true! What's worse (and I'm sure you'll recognize that aswell), if you have 4 kids close together is can get hard to distinguish who did what when etc. I know my youngest was a terrible eater and that I only got him on solids (he was 10 months at the time) by putting sugar through this dinner. I know my oldest only ate dinner when I covered it with loads of cheese. I know my second daughter ate EVERYTHING (and still does!). I cannot recall for the love of it what the eating habits of my third daughter were. I didn't write it down and now I'm memory-less about this one .. (Oh, the guilt!!!)
This is why I stopped extensive journalling. I never have the time anyway. Instead I'm noting all the everyday nitbits of information in my daily logbook. What's more, I have a logbook for each of my kids, where I note down a few sentences every day. It doesn't hold any value today, but I know it will be priceless when they are older!!!