Looking Back

I know for many of us, we have only been mothers for a couple of years or even a couple of months. There is such a long learning curve that probably lasts about 18 years or even longer. And even though I've only been a mom for a short time and still have a long way to go, in some ways, I feel like I've been a mother forever and it's all I've ever known. Sure, I can look back and remember days as a teenager wishing I could be an adult because life was 'so much easier and less stressful' or days in college thinking life in the corporate world would be so much less annoying than having to study all the time, or even while I was working full-time thinking it must be so fun to stay at home and play with kids all day. But the truth is, I probably missed out on enjoying a lot of those stages of life by wishing I were on to the next.

There are days when I am anxious for Sara to start school, so I can sit around all day and wonder what I'm going to do with myself. But by then, I'm sure I will have a few more little ankle biters to tend do and even less time to day dream. There are certainly things about my life that knowing what I know now, I would do differently and motherhood feels the same. Although I certainly wouldn't change being a mother, I would choose to not stress out so much when Sara would cry and not feel badly about spending another Sunday in the foyer. Or that she isn't go to starve if I don't feed her this very second. So what if you were asked...

If you could go back to before your first baby, what would you tell yourself?