Several times in the last year I've been able to spend time with my friend Susan, and each time we've talked about how great this stage is with it's increased freedom and flexibility. Both of our oldest are married, we both have college kids, she has one on a mission, and our youngest are all in high school. There is so much to love about this stage.
The funny thing is that I've spent my whole life dreading it, sure that I would be miserable without my houseful of little kids. Despite the fact that said houseful always exhausted me and sometimes made me miserable! But change is change, and as I have now come to realize I dread all of it.
This weekend Lindsay and Katie came to visit. We had a terrific time. Segways and desserts and rain and waterfalls and beautiful vistas and endless conversation. Not much sleep at any point, of course. And then they flew off home yesterday, I drove back to church and taught my Relief Society lesson, and came home to take a 2.5 hour nap. Then I was actually in bed by 10:30 (a rarity for bedtime-hating me) and decided at 9:30 this morning (still in my pajamas) that I was ready for another nap, which feeling I did not fight.
When I got up from my nap I ate and then decided to put this puzzle together that's been sitting around for almost a year. It was easier than I'd realized and went together quickly, and I enjoyed the peace of working on it in the living room. Still in my pajamas.
I'm loving this stage. I need to remember this--that the dread turned out to be needless in the end. (This time and so many others.) That life keeps being good, and in some ways gets even better.
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I'm glad to know it. Some days I worry that when I get there, all I'll want is this back again, even while hoping that that time will be better in some ways than the all-little-kids-all-the-time stage, thereby ruining both times. Does that make sense? No. Once my father-in-law said, with a snicker, "I wouldn't be where you are again (meaning covered with little kids) for any amount of money." He's never been one for tact. And although most of the time I would have agreed with him, it annoyed me that he said it and I sad right back, "Nor would I be where you are without having gotten to do this." So I'm working on loving what's going on right now so much that I don't feel like I have to go on needing it after it's over because I didn't do it well enough the first time around. And learning what not to say to my children-in-law.
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