She ain't heavy, she's my daughter

I found this post in my drafts from a year and a half ago. I think I’m already starting to forget...

When I was a tween (before that word was invented) I read this book called Memo: To Myself When I Have a Teenage Kid. It was a story about a 13-year-old girl who keeps a diary and has boy problems, and her mom gives her her old diary from when she was 13 and had boy problems, and then they understand each other better. And the boy problems all work out splendidly.

Anyway I was a pretty awesome diary-keeper once upon a time. I now have a gigantic box (or gigundo, as Karen Brewer would say, and if you know who that is, then we may have been tweens at the same time) full of my old journals.

These days, besides my blog, I write short personal journal entries on average a couple of times a year. Hannah gave me a daily diary a few years ago and I kept at it for almost a year. I really tried! But you know what, it's all enough. Lowering diary-keeping standards commences... now. Even the great (fictional) Sarah Prine sometimes went years between journal entries.

The point... that all of this loaded backstory is slowly lunging toward... is that I hope I remember how physically draining it is to take care of a baby for like... the first 18 months, or even two years. I honestly forgot, although I have done it three times before. Besides the sleep loss, I think it's the lugging that does it. My back is taking a beating. Sure I can let her cry while I do whatever two-handed task. I often do that actually, when I have to. But the crying takes its own kind of toll on me.

I love this time with Polly. In fact this year has FLOWN. On Polly's first birthday, which is only weeks away, I guarantee I'll be in tears. But I am writing about this aspect because I really don't want to forget. When Lars was no longer a toddler but I didn't have a baby yet, I smirked more than once at haggard moms of young babies and toddlers. Because I seriously forgot! And I think I might smirk again in coming years-- perhaps understandably, since the mental toll (plus lack of sleep) a tween or teen takes on a parent must make the extra 20 pounds of baby-on-a-hip seem so silly and simple.

Granny Babs had her sixth baby when my sister Bonny was 17. At one point she had a kid who was in college, one in high school, one in middle school, one in elementary school, one in preschool, and one at home in diapers. All at once. How did she survive? I will never understand.

Babies are so small and it seems like it should be so easy just to carry them and snuggle them and mother them without losing steam. Or you know, just let a few things go. Let the dishes and laundry and mail and trash pile up because babies don't keep, etc. etc. How quickly we forget, my friends. How quickly we forget. (Survival instinct, is my guess)

Oh, and one unexpected upside of lugging little mama's-girls around is that sometimes you can stick them in laundry baskets and thereby bring the laundry and the baby up or down stairs at the same time. A for effort!