Awake Before The Sun

On almost any given morning during the winter I would rather sleep until after the sun has been up for at least a few minutes. I would prefer to stay under the covers snuggling and drinking hot tea. The winter makes me want to let things grind to a halt, to hibernate, and say, “wake me up when the world starts turning green again.” 

These aren’t how my mornings go though. Most days I’m up before the sun having been awoken by some less than gentle action of the formerly sleeping toddler beside me. Today the sound of a footie pajama zipper going up and down  and gentle repeated elbowing to my back were my alarm. 

There’s no time to stretch or let my eyes adjust. She wakes with an urgent agenda. She’s hungry. She’s hungry like I didn’t feed her dinner last night. She eats and she’s magically ready for her day. Ready to craft and build and play and I’m still wiping the sleep from my eyes 

There’s a common misconception that parents are in charge. When you have young children, they make the rules. This is a lesson you learn hard and fast the first time your baby cries in hunger just as you have finally dozed off for the first time since their birth. 

Babies don’t care what you normally do. They definitely don’t care about what you like to do or want to do. In fact, it sometimes will feel like they wait for you to sit down to do that thing before they show you who the real boss of the house is.

You’ll think, oh yay! I’ve gotten the hang of this and then your baby says, “haha! I’m evolving!” and everything changes again and you all readjust. It goes on like this throughout their life. The constant readjustment and settling into the new normal never ends. How can it? They’re ever evolving beings whose wants and needs seem to be in a constant state of flux. 

You might think, oh well this is my first baby, it won’t be this way the next time. It might! No matter how much say, “I’m going to raise them all the same.” That’s just not how it goes because no two children are exactly the same. Frankly, I am not the same. Me as a mom of three is not the same mom as I was when I was a mom of two and that mom was not the same as a mom of one. I can’t imagine that I could be if I wanted to. 

Parenting is exhausting. It’s frustrating. There are moments where you will wonder what you were thinking-to throw chaos into a still pond. You’ll have never been this tired, this overwhelmed, this disconnected from life outside of your home. Dare I say, you need these moments.

That’s where you witness the beauty in the chaos. The actions that break the frustration, the look of complete connection as you nurse together in the night, the sweet voice that wakes you before the sun. It’s gentle reminders like first smiles and laughs and tiny hands on your face and “I love you” said by the tiniest of voices. It’s little victories like when your baby finally latches and being able to get them sleeping in their own beds that will offer you some clarity. 

Parenting will constantly challenge you and pull at your heart strings. These hard moments will pass though. You’ll get through it and you won’t have been alone.

I promise you this: there will be so many magical moments so balance all the chaos and the doubt. Your children will also be loving, funny, capable of so much compassion, and will add so many moments of pure joy to your world. 

I’ll catch up on my sleep eventually. One day I’ll finish my tea before it’s gotten cold and I won’t be finishing up a blog post as the sun is waking. She’ll eventually need me less. She’ll be self driven and independent  For now, I’ll enjoy my cold tea and the sweet toddler on my lap who is semi patiently waiting for me to raid the pantry-again.