One of the perks of having young adults as children is when you need to go away for the night you don’t have to worry about baby sitters, house sitters or a dog sitter because one or both of your young adult children is willing and able to tend both the house and dogs. The hubby and I are very lucky in that we can trust both of our children to keep the house intact, the dogs fed, watered and walked and whatever else needs to be done.
Yet while watching them now as young adults and excited for both of them as they grow up and start to encounter the first challenges of adulthood with all the responsibilities that come with independence, I find myself dwelling in memories of both of them as babies and toddlers. I miss their new baby smell and all their crazy toddler antics. Once you are a parent, you are a parent for life. The days of worrying never stop, even when they attain adulthood, that magic number 18. Yet parenthood is a gift that gives forever, the laughter you experience, the love you feel as well as the sense of wonder that you somehow made this little person and that they are in your care forever is a gift like no other. I wouldn’t trade it for anything and to think that one day, perhaps I and the hubby will become grandparents and we get to hold a new baby again. We get excited just thinking about our babies, in a decade or so, might become parents themselves. Today it is craziness to contemplate but further down the road of life, a potential event. Wow.
laurieanichols 