Designed to Slow Down

Life is going by really fast right now. Between prepping my kids for substitute lessons and planning ahead to buy the books they'll need for the next two months, creating practicing "schedules" for the students who want to take two months off from piano (which I never recommend if you don't plan on straight up quitting,) buying last minute baby things to prepare for her arrival, meal prepping and freezing food for the months to come, life is busy.

And life is moving fast.

It really feels like a day or two ago when it was Monday afternoon and I was getting ready for my weekly lineup of kids to teach. Well, that was about four days ago. Before we know it, these last four weeks will be gone and our baby girl will not be so safely, well-contained and easily transported anymore, and she will be a part of the outside world we already know so well.

Our friends just had a baby recently, and his first month of life seemed to fly by to the rest of us. Of course, for them, such was not the case. I'm sure nights when the baby wouldn't sleep for more than a few hours at a time felt like an eternity. There are probably more moments than one as a parent when you wonder why it takes so long to eat "one meal" as an infant. And the amount of attention and needs they have for being such simple human beings at that age is quite unfathomable in the dire moments. (Simple being their job and role in life at the moment. They are very complex when it comes to their human body and what they are capable of which adults are not.)

I woke up this morning with the thought that perhaps we were designed this way to slow down time so some of these moments would be captured a little longer. We pay attention more when the needs are greater. And although stressful and hard, we slow down to notice things. The way her hair has grown longer. The shape of her eyes. The shape of her nose. The lines in her lips. Because let's all be honest. If our babies slept through the night in the first six months, we'd probably never truly stop to look at them enough to notice what was different or how fast they were growing. We might notice something everyday and be like "wow you look different today" but we probably wouldn't be able to instantly attribute it to a specific feature. Everything would just flow on by.

It's definitely easier to say and think through this when I'm not sleep deprived or overworked. Someone please remind me in about two months when all of this becomes my reality and I may be questioning at moments if I enjoy parenting and motherhood due to lack of sleep and foggy thinking.

There was purpose to this design: to allow us inadvertently to "slow time down" so we notice the subtle nuances.