It's no secret that things take longer with a toddler. All the things.
That's hard for me. Not only am I impatient, I'm also by nature just fast. I walk through a clothing store and know if I'm gonna buy something or not. My response time (in person) is now. I'm processing the likely end of your sentence before you're verbalizing the middle.
And while I'd love for this to be a brag, it's often not. It means I would've walked by my wedding dress if it hadn't been for Cassidy. I say "no" and realize actually yes, or "yes" and realize actually no. I answer a question you weren't on your way to asking and now you need to start your thought over from the beginning.
Now, a lot of the time I am right about purchases or what you're saying or what we should do, but I'm not sure the stats are quite good enough to justify my obsessive urgency. And I might have always known that but never gotten around to working on it if God hadn't sent us Elle.
Not only are toddlers the ultimate...modifier, but many of our parenting choices exacerbate the slowness. We want her to have the time/space/permission to explore the world and build her skills, which lately means waiting thirty to sixty seconds for her to go down the single step from the laundry room into the garage.
It isn't that she's being stubborn or dillydallying; she's actually trying her little best. The step feels like a cliff to her, and she wants to do it well. She'll squat down, but then decide that isn't the best approach. She'll slide one foot off the edge, but realize she needs to brace herself, so she'll grab the door frame, but she's still standing too far back to reach the floor, so she lets go and repositions and tries again. Then she decides no, that doesn't feel right either, so she tries sitting on her booty and scooting forward. Yes, that's it. Scoot, scoot, scoot. Deep bend at the waist...straighten up...yay! Beaming, clapping, so proud. So beautiful.
So slow.
We have places to be, places we're probably ten minutes late to already. The garage is hot. We are hemorrhaging AC and I'm holding a thousand things and my arm is going numb.
And in the middle of all that, Elle is learning to be a person for the first time, right in front of me.
As I was driving to Mom's birthday celebration today, God sent me a thought that seems obvious now: What if being in the hard, slow, difficult is the thing? I don't need to "get to" anything else. The goal for this season is NOT to be comfortable, not even to have fun, but to be in the moment with my baby, whatever that is. So I'll get a bit hot. So we'll loose eighty cents of air conditioning. So my arm will be a little numb.
Is that really so bad? Can't I just take a shower later, skip a tenth of a coffee, shake out my arm?
Maybe I need to stop rushing, whether that means rushing to the car, rushing to nap time, or—God forbid—actually rushing through precious toddlerhood. At the end of the day, what am I trying to get to so fast? The restaurant will still be there and my family will still love me. My TV shows and books aren't gonna expire.
It's not my turn to eat hot food or sprint to the car or get dressed in one uninterrupted act. It's my turn to watch Elle pick a clover flower and track an airplane across the sky and point out every dog on every bag of dog food in the store. I've been running an imaginary race with no prize at the end.
As I say to Elle a dozen times a day, "that's so silly" ☺️
~Stephanie
Facing Demons: Feel the Feelings
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