There’s a strange ache in parenting that no one quite prepared me for. In this season of my life, it’s the quiet grief that comes from watching my babies grow up.
No one tells you how you’ll miss the weight of them in your arms at 3 a.m., despite the sleep deprivation you know comes with those wakings, how you’ll long to hear a word mispronounced one more time, or how you’ll look at an old pair of outgrown shoes and feel your heart swell with both pride and pain. Parenting is, in so many ways, a slow goodbye to the baby they were, the toddler they used to be, the little one who needed help tying shoes or reaching the sink.