It's complicated

I've been looking through old pictures this evening for no particular reason and I stumbled upon some of Will that I hadn't seen in a while. This one was taken at one of his many checkups during his first weeks of life as he struggled to gain weight. At his smallest, he weighed five and a half pounds. At the time, I was too silly to realize just how small that really was.

What I did realize, though, was that I didn't want to fail him. Ever. And so I pumped about four million times a day and supplemented nursing with bottles of pumped milk. I spent so much of my time either pumping or feeding him that I did little else during these weeks. Sometimes it got a little exhausting and monotonous. But I did it because I wanted what was best for him.

And now he's three. Impossibly big and talkative and all action, all the time. I still want what's best for him but it's not nearly as easy as making sure he gets breastmilk (or "baby milk" as he calls it now). The days of pumping, feeding, pumping, feeding, on and on and on seem so simple now. So straightforward.

Will is a dweller in extremes. He's the happiest happy and the saddest sad and the maddest mad, often within a five minute span. He's loud and demanding and persistent and frequently annoying. He loves nothing more than to get under my skin, to get a reaction from me. And yet.

He can be extremely thoughtful and kind, especially to Laura. He's always proud of his ability to share (we'll check back on that one in a little while, though, as Laura gets old enough to want some of his toys). He's funny and articulate (sorry, I know I'm his mom but it's true) and a complete and total original.

And most days he drives me absolutely crazy. I hate that somewhere along the way, I seem to have misplaced the desire to not let him down. (My primary desire these days is to just get through the day with everyone fed and relatively clean.) He's still, though, the same little baby in the picture, only bigger. I hate that I yell at him and I hate even more that he doesn't respond to my ranting. (Who would?) I hate that a three year old can make me so crazy.

When I think back to what I imagined this to be like when he was just a tiny little thing, I'm not sure what I think. On the one hand, I thought I had this parenting thing figured out. The pre-child version of me was so insufferably smug. I would never have the child who threw tantrums and didn't listen. After all, I'm a teacher, someone who's had classes on child behavior and feels pretty confident in her ability to manage a classroom full of kids. But managing 30 kids in a classroom is child's play (no pun intended)compared to raising your own challenging child.

I think the primary difficulty of raising any kid is that it's so all-encompassing. I spend 100% of my time with my kids (and this certainly doesn't make me mother of the year). I realize this probably isn't normal or healthy but it just can't be any other way for now. At school, when the bell rings at the end of the day, the difficult  (and non-difficult) kids file out the classroom and get on the bus to go home while the teacher breathes a sigh of relief. There is no bell here and this is home. There is no end.

But even just typing that makes me feel guilty. Would I really want an end to this? No. He's stubborn and difficult and exhausting but such is life. And such is parenting. There is nothing harder than this, than having two little ones whose needs are often competing and whose schedules are often conflicting. But hard though it is, the only way to the other side is through it. So we wade through our everyday frustrations and annoyances hoping that the other side is in fact there, that it's not too far away. Hoping that they know I'm doing the best I can, even if it falls short.