These are the Easy Years

This morning C threw up. AGAIN. We are now on day 7 of this illness and I feel so bad for them. Yesterday we seemed to be out of the woods. Today we seem to be taking a step back again.

Luckily, last week I got an email from Aunt Pat that has stuck w/ me the past few days. She said that kids are exhausting...physically when they are little and emotionally when they are older. And all weekend I kept thinking that I am in the BEST years of my life. That getting thrown up on was really not that bad, especially when your little girl looks at you afterwards and says "Hold you?" which means "pick me up!" Or when they run up, throw their arms out wide, and bury themselves in your lap.

My mother used to say that she loved her 30s best (mind you, she had her last kid at 3o...while I was still throwing up myself after a rough night at HBS at 30) because she would go to bed at night with all her kids tucked safely into bed. When they were older she could go to bed when she wanted, but she couldn't sleep because she'd lay awake and worry that one of her kids was out lying in a ditch somewhere (to which my brother Daniel would inevitably respond "How many ditches do you see around here Mom???" --My brothers are the funniest people I know. I wish everyone could experience a holiday dinner w/ my brothers and cousins.)

My point is, I'll take physical exhaustion ANYDAY over emotional exhaustion. I'll take staying up all hours rocking a baby to sleep over staying up worrying that my child is in with the wrong crowd, depressed, not eating enough, doesn't like me, etc. I'll take a child who won't leave me alone for five seconds (going to the bathroom is a family affair for me these days) over one who won't have anything to do with me. I'm sure that having adolescent and adult kids is also wonderful, but I gotta admit, every time I felt exhausted this weekend, or got a little tired of someone begging to be held, all I had to do was flash forward 11 years to teenage angst, and suddenly the weekend seemed like one of the best of my life.

Oh, and the Milfs (my FF team...the blog police (Andrew) censored me on this one, but whatever, I need a rooting section, and how can you root for my team if you don't know the name) had a rough week--maybe they had the stomach flu too.