No regrets

OK, so I'm looking around at all my friend's blogs and sites. Many of their posts have pictures of their little babies and toddlers and talking about nap time (hooray for naptime!) and watching Elmo and the silly things their kids do.

I enjoy everyone's babies and want to reach out and pinch their cheeks and spoil them rotten and give them everything that their parents won't let them have. They are all so cute and funny and perfect!

Would I want to do it all over again? Nope.

Granted, I started my family young. Really really young. And I had them really fast and really close together. Was it the smartest thing to do? Dunno. All I know is that while everyone else is having babies now, my baby is 8, and I really really like it that way.

I don't have to change diapers. I don't have to feed and dress them. No more hassling with car seats. I can tell them to go outside and play and know that they will look both ways before crossing the street. They don't fight with me at bedtime. They bathe and shower themselves. They even occasionally ask questions that spark an interesting conversation, "Mom, what's Socialism?"

They like scary movies, they like to help me garden and cook, they play video games with me - and win most of the time. I am having so much more fun with them now that I ever did when they were little.

I look at Jaylan now, who is 12, and I realize, "I've only got 6 years left with him. I've got a lot of playing to fit in the next 6 years."

Anyways, what is my point? Hold on to your babies, and let me hold them too, because I love them, (But I love handing them off to their Mom's when they are stinky too!) Enjoy you're time with them now, and when they are 8, and 10, and 12. I have no regrets at all for playing with them when they were babies, or enjoying them now that they are older.

I look back at my house growing up. It wasn't always the cleanest or the nicest. Nowadays my mom's house is really nice and clean and she has nice things. I look at my house now and the state of total chaos that it seems to remain in...but I remember a poem that Mom had on her wall growing up.

The cleaning and scrubbing will wait till tomorrow,

For children grow up, as I've learned to my sorrow.

So quiet down cobwebs.

Dust go to sleep.

I'm rocking my baby and babies don't keep.

-Ruth Hulburt Hamilton

Someday I'll have a nice clean house with nice things in it. But I'm not looking forward to it that much.