The Phenomenon of Time

It’s always weird how time has a way of making you feel. How sometimes something feels like just yesterday and it was years ago. Yet other times a short time feels like a long time. These feelings are especially strong when you are talking about your times with your young kids.

I barely can remember my life without kids, yet I’ve only been a parent for a little more than three years. I can hardly remember what it was like only have one kid, and I’ve only had two for a little over a year. In some ways it feels like it was just yesterday that we went apple picking in 2010, but the event was so different than it was this past weekend.

Last year we went apple picking with a two year old and an infant. Gabby the time spent nuzzled in my Baby Bjorn and Drew was starting to enjoy rides and activities like the orchard had. A year later, which has that weird feeling of one second ago but also forever ago too, I have two children enjoying the experience so differently.

Adam and I participated in activities like this as a young couple sans children. We participated with a young child. And we did it again with a young child and an infant. Nothing will compare to this experience of having two young children enamored by apples that you can eat directly from the tree, riding on the train, petting the animals, running through the maze, and playing on the playground. It was one of my earliest memories of feeling like we have kids (and not just a toddler and baby).

Adam and I systematically switched off chasing and playing with one, to come together and do an activity and then do it all over again. It was such an engaging afternoon that I really needed. Coming off of a treacherous day with Drew last week and still working on techniques and discipline methods, it was a day of fun and ease. I couldn’t believe how far we have come in a mere year.

And although I’m loving where we ended up in a years time, I can’t help but feel excited and sad for where we will be in a year from now. This past year was so exciting with Gabby experiencing such major growth and Drew becoming so much more of a real independent person. I can only imagine that the year to come will be very similar. And in the same ways it will be exciting to see what they will be like then, I will miss what they are like now.

Days spent chasing after them and caring for them are long and tiring but so very fleeting. In the same ways it will feel like the time flew by, it will also be so hard to remember what they were like now. And as this week marks the Jewish New Year, as a resolution I’m going to try (and I know I say this in some way every year) to savor these moments of having a three year old and one year old. Even the frustrating ones because before I know it we’ll be picking apples next year and it will be hard to remember what the frustrations were a year prior. And as hard as it will be to remember the frustrations, it will be even harder to remember the blissful moments like Saturday apple picking 2011.