Parenting keeps you on your toes, no doubt about that. Just when you think you have something figured out or know what to expect, you discover that you were, in fact, wrong. Take, for example, what I had always imagined would be true about sleeping. I had a notion that I would perhaps not sleep ideally well while pregnant. I had also heard repeatedly that infants do not sleep at convenient times. And I had heard that sleeping through the night was not an event, but rather a process, and that the process would be considered to be well under way when the child performed the miraculous feat of sleeping from 11pm until 5am. But, in all the things I'd heard about sleeping, I did not hear messages about not sleeping when a child was say 2 years old. Or 4 years old for that matter. Perhaps the people who preceded me into parenthood realized that the survival of the species was contingent on them remaining silent on these points.
Through all the exhaustion, though, the kids still find ways to make it worth it. For instance, today at food school, Lemon had a semi-accident (made it to the bathroom, but not quite soon enough or with enough control). So, when we got home, he had to change clothes. He's been able to get out of his own bottoms for a long time, but still kind of struggles with shirts. So, he slipped off the wet bottoms, refused my help with the shirt, and then, with the shirt off of his body but still stuck around his head like a turban, and without a trace of irony, he announced "See how grown up I am now?"
