Evolving

I know I said my recent thoughts on parenting were going to be in three parts, but I added another one, so there will be four. Writers prerogative.

PART III: EVER EVOLVING

I sat in the rocking chair tonight nursing my baby while staring at the trio of dinosaur pictures hanging on the wall across from me. Nursing my baby tends to make me contemplative. That, or an unevenly hung picture on the wall…

The dinosaur silhouette on the far right is hanging a few centimeters too low, and it has been since the day my husband and I hung the pictures up. I’ve been staring at that Parasaurolophus for the past few months now, and tonight, while staring at that dinosaur, I realized how much I've evolved since becoming a mother.

I’m ever evolving.

Not revolving. Though sometimes I feel as though I’m ever revolving too. Like a revolving glass door, you push yourself around, miss your entrance, and end up at the same place. “Wait, wasn’t I already here?” “This isn’t where I’m supposed to be.” Just like in motherhood, “Didn’t I just clean up this mess?” “I thought I scrubbed that crayon off the wall yesterday?” (Nope, that one was red.) “Didn’t we already get through this phase?”

Oh, the phases. All the phases. You’re forced to change and adapt to your child’s different phases. One month you think you’ve got it down, and then the next month one of your kids decides to cut out their second nap, or you have to deal with a phase of your other child eating his earwax - just when you got him to stop eating his eye bugars. (True story.)

Just like a revolving door, you push your child through one phase only to revisit the same phase a few years later with your next child.

It’s all that revolving that’s causing the evolving.

It seems that my children bring out the worst in me – often magnifying my imperfections. But, they also bring out the best in me, and are helping (or forcing) me to evolve into someone better.

During the first few years of my marriage, (okay, maybe during the first seven years), I had major issues with my husband hanging pictures on the wall unevenly, or spacing them wrong. You would have thought he had committed a major felony by my reaction to those petty crimes. It drove me crazy that he couldn’t hang a picture right! Really crazy. That Parasaurolophus is proof that motherhood has mellowed me. My children are helping (forcing) me to be more patient. They are helping me to evolve into someone who can focus on the important things, and to let go of the unimportant. Now, I look at that dino and shrug my shoulders. Crooked pictures don’t bother me anymore, I’ve just let it go.

I know what you’re thinking, and I could fix it. It would take, what? Five minutes? But, I’m just not worried about it. I’m too busy.

Busy evolving…

and nursing my baby.