It might be a bit arrogant of me to claim that I'm about to give you better advice, but as they say, "It's not bragging if it's true!"
My friend Erin is expecting her second child. Her oldest child is in the neighborhood of two. I was thinking of my own time as the parent of a newborn and a two year old the other day when I was recommending picture books for her to read to her little guy. Erin, I have so much more to recommend to you than picture books!
Let me start by saying that when you feel exhausted, please do not reach out and slap the person who says, "Enjoy them while they're young! It goes so fast!" Also, please do not reach down the throat of the person who says, "You think it's tough now? Wait 'til they're teenagers!" It's tempting, I know. You might also be tempted to feel guilty about not enjoying every second of your children's idyllic childhood, but you should also resist that temptation. I don't know what possesses people to say either of these things or any of the many similar sentiments. While it's true that the years fly by, it is in no way helpful to the exhausted mom of small, screaming children to be told that she should be enjoying this. I think it would be much smarter to say, "Can I get you a latte? You've earned it!"
I would also throw out this advice- you need a break. In order to love what you're doing, you have to be well rested. I don't care how great anything is, food, music, art, movies, creation, whatever, if you're exhausted, how the heck are you supposed to enjoy it? So Erin, back to those book recommendations I made earlier; (I recommended anything by Janelle Cannon or Margie Palatini, in case you were wondering.) I have a part two to those recommendations.
First, once you get that newborn settled into your house a little bit, change your older child's schedule to fit the baby. It won't kill him to be flexible and his wife might thank you for it some day. One way to get that schedule to fit the baby is by reading. (It's a twofer!) Get everyone fed and changed as needed (no small feat in and of itself, I know.) and then settle in with a stack of books and both kiddos. Keep reading until that baby falls asleep. Then EVERYONE to their beds, including you! Do not clean, launder, cook, check on, or fix anything. Go take a nap and lose the guilt. I'm serious. You might even have enough energy after that nap to have adult conversation with your husband past eight o'clock.
Second trick- books on tape. At about two and a half my son decided that he could get by on a 45 minute nap. Since his sister thought she should still eat at 2:00 a.m., a 45 minute nap was not going to cut it for Mom. What to do? Books on tape to the rescue. I set the two year old up with a little tape player a nice long picture book with accompanying tape. I got it all rolling for him, along with the instruction to go to sleep when the tape ended. Then I rushed off to lay down and was able to get an extra 20 minutes of sleep in. I started having books on tape to listen to in the car and when I needed to cook dinner too. You think your two year old can't sit for books on tape? I bet he can- if my little monkey can, yours can too.
The truth is, that with some decent rest I was so much more able to "enjoy them while they're young!" I still think it's a really unhelpful thing to say, but at least I was rested enough to be patient with people who were dealing with their own regret by shoving it on me.
