How My Toddler Is Teaching Me Self-Love
He does this through his boundless 3-year-old energy and his charmed perception.
I prided myself on becoming pregnant fairly easily without any medical intervention at 45. However, there is no fooling around when you have a child at this age.
Everything counts and keeps score: how you eat, sleep, move, think and ingest stress or not.
What matters the most: how you spend your precious time and energy.
I can’t skip a workout. I need to pickup a child who feels like a sack of wet rice.
Deciding to have a cheat day from my anti-inflammatory diet often results in a migraine and debilitating ear pain.
No longer can I avoid my creativity or put it off. Niko senses my bad mood and starts clinging to me as if he is afraid that I will disappear. In a way, he is sensing the truth.
Without creative expression, the tone of my days are the dull grey of a half-lived life.
A child can feel what you are feeling even if you can’t.
When you, as a parent, are grounded and present, your child will play happily and without your constant involvement. When you are barely holding onto your sanity because you haven’t had a moment to yourself, your child will worry for your life.
Their life depends on your well-being on every level. As a caregiver, your life is also intertwined with theirs.
Adults are starved for insightful inspiration and reminders of the light touch of childhood. That is why books like The Little Prince are so popular for readers of all ages. It directly addresses our need for child-like curiosity as we age and fight growing bitter.
My son refuses to stop seeing the world with anything but wonder.
He finds raindrops glistening on a spider web in the grass. And presents it to me with the sweep of his hand like he was Vanna White. He exclaims, “Ehguhbah!” (Look at this!)
Niko finds music in everything. One time, I found him shaking his hips with his palms were pressed against the washing machine. Alone in the semi-dark, he was dancing suggestively at the spin cycle and looked up at me and said, “Sohlee…uhmak.” (Sound..music)
He is curious about inappropriate things like a man who had fairly large boobs at his favorite wading pool. He was kept wondering aloud why they were so exposed and big. He laughed without meanness. Thank goodness his words were in Korean.
In other words, he reminds me to look at this fleeting, simple life with utter fascination.
Honestly though, it can be a heavy burden to see the light in the world when you don’t feel like it is shining within.
It doesn’t take much to wipe me out these days – a night of poor sleep, waking up with a cluster migraine and ear pain, suddenly feeling too big for my clothes, too small for the life I want to live.
All these seemingly small factors can make me feel like I am failing my son and myself. On these days, I feel like my whole existence is based on cleaning up dried Playdough, poop and food scraps.
I must sneak in time for myself and quickly grab hold of the beauty that comes my way in the form of a quote, a sunset, rose petals thrown along the sidewalk, a heart in my hot chocolate, a rock on the beach that looks like a little mountain.
This morning, he asked for butterfly bread in the morning. I did my best to envision this with pancake mix and strawberries.
I must stoke the fires within or at least fan the sometimes failing embers. I need to learn to love and cherish my time once more.
And this time around, I want to love myself with enough passion to never forget who I am again.
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