By Kristen C.
Last week I tried to feed my friend's 9-month-old son a potato chip.
Hey. It was a Ruffles! Chip. Cheerio. C'mon. Same difference.
And then a few weeks before, I tried to get him out of the car base in his carrier seat and totally forgot what to do.
Seriously. How do I have a fully functioning 2 and half-year old?
It amazes me how much you forget after just nearly three short years. It's probably for good reason, at least in my case, although I still not-so-fondly remember bouncing her with my foot in her already-vibrating baby seat just hoping to get another 15 minutes of a nap out of her.
15+1 = A full 16-minute nap. SCORE!
And there was the time I tried to pull my boob out of her mouth and replace it with a binky so I wouldn't have to hold her for a nap with her lips still stuck around my nipple.
Yeah. So much for that effort.
I have vague memories of the past -- the lullaby turned weeping song that I used to sing over and over and over while I rocked her to sleep at 3 a.m.; the little onesies I used to struggle to fit over her cloth diapers; and the pictures of me at 135 lbs., down about 15 lbs. from my typical pre-pregnancy weight, after enduring six months of the elimination diet.
But in the long scheme of things, time has flown by and with it, my memory for all things that have to do with taking care of a tiny baby.
I suppose changing, cuddling, and rocking a newborn again will bring it all back to me, in waves of emotional outburts of the good and not-so-good kind. But if not, I figure it's OK to make new memories. And this time, I'm all about those "making life easier and not being such a crazed type-AAA lunatic mommy" memories.
Letting go. Delegating. Or what I like to call "Here you go honey, I'm off to the spa for a full day of pampering and if he cries the whole time it won't be the end of the world" parenting.
Who says I didn't remember anything?
Kristen is a former college music professor turned stay-at-home-mother/rock star to her daughter Quinlan.
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