Some of the worst things about having little kids:
- Losing your patience more than you want to
- Worrying that they’ll never be independent
- Not liking their friends
- Wondering if their friends’ parents are thinking the same thing
- Calculating how much time you would need to read all the emails their schools send
- Always feeling like you’re either keeping too much of their artwork or not enough
- Feeling like most of your time is spent preparing meals or cleaning up after meals
- Endless laundry
- Managing screen time and feeling like you’re getting it wrong no matter what
- Just knowing that they’ll save their worst behavior for when their grandparents are watching
- Trying to remember what you did with your time before you were a parent
- Remembering how judgy you used to be when seeing other parents out in public
- Having your biggest flaws reflected right back at you in a blinding glare of failure
- Understanding that one day they won’t be little anymore, and that you probably won’t know when the last time will be that they’ll ask you to hold their hand, or sing lullabies to them, or any one of a million other things that big kids don’t do
Some of the best things about having little kids:
- Building stuff and then taking it apart again
- Colouring with them
- Enjoying how bad they are at hide and seek
- Finding something in your coat pocket that they asked you to hold onto weeks ago
- Their face when watching a busker play music
- Feeling their hand on your shoulder when you help them put on their shoes
- Blowing their minds with a dead-easy magic trick
- Cuddles
- Dance parties
- Tea parties
- Making forts
- Hearing them talk to themselves while they play
- Hearing them sing to themselves when they don’t realize they’re singing
- Listening to them explain their drawings
- When they get really into songs that you liked as a kid
- Realizing that if you handle a situation wrong, you are GUARANTEED to have another chance
And one thing that I can’t decide whether it’s good or bad:
- How simultaneously slowly and quickly the time passes
What makes this a beautiful song:
1. The opening piano riff sounds like a music box that’s losing momentum.
2. The instrumentation is small-scale orchestral; the kind of instruments that would provide a soundtrack to a really fancy kids’ puppet show.
3. The lyrics encapsulate the beautiful challenge of doing the world’s most difficult job with someone you love.
Recommended listening activity:
Showing them photos of themselves when they were babies.