The Little Ones Era

My youngest finished preschool this May. He’s off to kindergarten in the Fall. All my babies, in big kid school. You know how Taylor Swift has her Eras Tour…you may have heard of it? An Eras Tour of Parenthood chapters sure would be interesting. From babies to teens to adulthood – we go through some phases. Not with as many accompanying sequins as T Swizzle, but still.

I’ve reached the end of our preschool years, the Little Ones Era.

Before I get too sappy, a huge part of me is so ready for this change. I’ve been working a part time professor job around the kids since my oldest was a toddler, and figuring out how the hours can work in the needed timeframe by piecing together childcare has felt like mental gymnastics sometimes. And not the Simone Biles kind; the oh-dear, she fell off the beam again kind. The -let’s see if she’ll limp through the floor routine – kind.

I taught classes, and then at home I would grade and prep, while being full time mama-childcare as well. Sometimes the work happened at night, when I was exhausted but needed to get it done. Sometimes in the day with a child on my head asking for a snack. Sometimes in a bed, laying with a kid who wasn’t falling asleep, folder and pen in hand and grading by the nightlight lamp. Sometimes while Daniel Tiger and Trash Truck and Doc McStuffins played, while I felt guilty for giving my kids screentime while I worked instead of paying attention to them.

So the freedom to do a job between 8:45-3ish as a straight-up grown up and then focus on the kids when they get home sounds kind of cool. As Ron Swanson says, whole-assing something can be great.  

I’m also a homebody, and I love a quiet minute at home to breathe. I know the get-your-stuff-together-home-time is not something out of the home workers get, and so I do not take the time for granted.

I’m also human, and parenting little ones is no small feat. They will syphon every ounce of your mental, emotional, and physical stability to the edge of functional. We parents could all write a book about what’s hard during this time. In fact, many have.

But it hit me recently. It hit me that, yes, this next phase means easier logistics in some ways. But it also means letting go of a huge part of my life. And honestly, my identity.

This year, when Bryce was graduating from his little preschool where all our kids went for the last 10 years….. I realized that I wasn’t fully a preschool parent anymore. I don’t feel old, but I’m the old mom in the mom’s night crowd, one foot edging towards the door. Some parents I know, but many are new young ones who were just starting this journey, at the other end from me. I was a bit incredulous. It happened so naturally and gradually, that I didn’t even notice the shift. Also, I don’t know what I’m doing yet! How can I be one of the older parents I used to think had it all figured out?

“Is he your only?” other parents ask at preschool gigs. “Oh no, he’s got two big sisters, 8 and 11.” A different world. A different era. And of course, two thirds of my mom-focus is on that– their school, activities like gymnastics or lacrosse, theater kid life, and big kid music and tv shows and books and interests. At the playground, I don’t have a baby on my hip or nursing in the shade. But my heart kind of seizes up for just a moment when I see a mama in that phase, like a ghost of myself.  I very specifically remember, when our first was a baby, other moms with older kids randomly gazing at us with this… look. Not a longing exactly, but this look said “I know where you are even if I’m not there anymore, and I kind of miss it.” Some of them would say something like that at the grocery store or wherever we were traipsing around that day. I couldn’t even imagine a child out of diapers, much less, becoming a mom who stared at babies at the library thinking “Mine were JUST that tiny. Where did the time go??”

Do I want to be pregnant again or go through newborn and toddler years? Dear lord, no.

But I feel the need to write down the world as I knew it, of this era, before the memories gradually fade away and disappear like Bing Bong in Inside Out (cue tears if you have a soul).

With little ones, the days were mine. Sure they were in preschool for a couple days a week as 2-3 year olds, and then 5 delightful days once they were getting ready to turn 4. But with drop off at 9 and pick up at noon, you’d be shocked how 2.5ish hours *flew* by trying to cram every ounce of adult time into it.  

Before covid, for drop-offs, we’d wait in the little church lobby for the kids to go marching to their classroom and hang their lunchbox in their cubby, saying hi to their tiny friends. Bria often escaped to go crawling down the hall or trying to climb the stairs. The school had switched to carpool-line-only by the time Bryce came through, and we’d listen to music and play cards in the van while we waited to get to the front of the line. I watched the seasons change year after year on the trees that lined the parking lot driveway.

Honestly, I love mom life. And I loved this stage. A toddler on one hip, a rounded belly holding our next wiggling baby, and the oldest leading the way. I know and respect so many women – friends and family – who don’t love the ‘littles’ stage of motherhood or who work and work hard for real money (!!) outside the home. Which is Also Totally Fine and Great.

Me…. I’d wanted this life for as long as I could remember. Working a paying-job has a wide variety of perks, but mother goose was kind of the big dream for this weirdo over here. I couldn’t wait for it, and then, once my brood came, it felt completely and totally right. Not easy. Not without stress.  But I never doubted the role I’d chosen.

 In Little One world, routine was sanity. Mornings were either preschool and/or doing something with the youngers, and usually I had the days of the week planned out. Storytimes at the library, where we’d sing the choo-choo song and watch them learn to interact with others. Where we met some of our first friends, some of whom have remarkably stayed in our lives all these years, one way or another.  Amazement Square, our children’s museum, and the familiar track of which floors to visit. Pirates Cove, which was just for toddlers and sock feet and crawling babies. Finding bathrooms while we were potty training and encouraging and washing hands and rushing back out to play. Juggling a diaper bag (I switched to a plaid backpack which saw me through ALL kids), making sure it didn’t swing down and whack them on the face when it was on one shoulder. (Was that just me? #coordinated)
Always watching, always chasing, hands always full, always on.

At home, I had my faithful Winnie the Pooh mug with different learning activities for the afternoon- they’d draw one each day. And then there were the crafts and letters and cute pintrest stuff. Walks around the neighborhood, one in a carrier, and one stopping every 4 seconds to watch an ant or feel a pinecone. The predictability of nap time and an hour or two of quiet. The snuggles after. Watching a very scattered-plot puppet show and a baby nursing in the other arm. Backyard exploring. Learning to pump on the swings. The chaos of playtime. I need routine but much of home time within it wasn’t super structured. Playing with tiny humans while also trying to, like, unload the dishwasher or be somehow productive, is not wildly exhilarating. Often overstimulating, yes. Exciting? No. But it was important.

I see parents of littles now, helping them slowly up the parts of the playground that are tricky, while my kids now bound up them top speed. I remember the playground just being one big high-ropes-spotters-ready moment (if you know, you know).  Worrying when there weren’t rails. Worrying when the slide was steep or the temperature of the sun. Worrying when they were awkward AF when another kid came to play. Worrying took up a lot of my time in fact. Worrying that they weren’t getting enough sleep. Worrying if they were off their schedule. Comparing them to other babies and reminding myself that all these little creatures are different.

I still worry. But the list has changed.

Currently, I’m worried about a school board making destructive choices that affect my children and all of their classmates. I’m worried about recess time and the frustrating testing culture. I’m worried about where to get locker supplies and what kind of backpack middle schoolers should use. I’m worried about tryouts for a sixth grader and how reading will go in kindergarten. I’m worried about creative time and important safety talks and …well…still bedtimes. I guess that never changes. Apparently one day, my kids will sleep ‘too much,’ and let me say, I look FORWARD to this day.

My kids aren’t tucked under my wing anymore; they aren’t on my hip in the parking lot or in a new place (although Bryce still attempts to live as a tree frog on me). I watch from sidelines and uber and drop off now. I remember parent and me gymnastics. Melody Makers in the upstairs of Givens. Swimming lessons at the Y, which was just parents holding their two year olds in the water while an impossibly young lifeguard taught them to blow bubbles. Swimmie diapers and how freaking long it took to change from a swimsuit to normal clothes. Getting home before one fell asleep in the car and ruined bedtime completely. All the bags. All the car seats. All the snacks. All the things.

I love my big kids’ classrooms and teachers and school. But I will miss the Halloween parade and carpool drop off, high-fiving Mr. Linwood. The play kitchens and corners of blocks and a rug for circle time. Updates from Mrs. Blankenship with how they imitated ants with balloons or drew with chalk during lunch time in the courtyard. Texting Annie that I’d forgotten library books and knowing Mrs. D would send Bryce home with 5 anyway. Handprint art and going from scribbles to letters to words. Jeff throwing goldfish through the window in carpool. The familiar playground, a merry go-round and train and tunnel to cool off in.

Yeah, guys. I’m already looking at this with hindsight bias and the rosiest of glasses, despite knowing how incredibly Not Easy this phase was.  

But this era felt like a simpler time, as the past always does. Not easier. Just…Slower. Smaller. Ours.

Someone told me once that with littles, the days are long, but the years are short.

Preach it, and Amen.

We are headed into the next chapter. Some call it the sweet-spot, before teenage joys completely descend upon us. But I can’t help but also feel that those Little One years, as long as the days could be, will always be some of my favorites. I’d probably do a thousand things differently if I could go back. But we did our best, right? I know one day, I’ll be looking back at our current present, and I’ll be wearing the same nostalgic glasses with the same hindsight bias. I hope so, anyway. Life usually works like that.

It almost feels like you have to grieve. They are only little once. This time of life is never coming back. My heart aches a bit to say goodbye to those long afternoons and planned out mornings and the life we created during those years. Not because I want to go back and live in some kind of Neverland, but because I’m realizing how much those years in fact meant to me. How grateful I am for that time. How much it defined me. And hopefully my babies.

I want them to keep growing. I want them to become. I want them to find what they like, what they don’t, create their islands of personality, and pull in core memories shaded in different hues (ok yes, I’ve been watching Inside Out 2). I don’t want them to stand still. I want them to be independent and brave and strong and full of change and develop that sense of self within. Time can’t freeze.

But it can be honored.

My kids better know, their tiny hands and toddling legs and little one moments are tattooed across my heart. I know there are more memories to come, and I’m excited for those.

But gosh, this era….

It really was a beautiful chapter.

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