Before your baby is born you have grand plans for their nursery. It will be a peaceful place for repose. Soothing colors will lull your baby to sleep each night in the expensive crib you either purchased or received as a hand-me-down. You carefully fold their tiny outfits and lovingly arrange them in the dresser drawers. The changing table stands ready with a terrycloth cover and a neat stack of newborn diapers waiting for your precious arrival.
Then, during the first three months of your baby’s life, you get a crash course in reality. The terrycloth cover gets soiled over and over again until you finally toss it. Your baby goes through five outfits in one day. How can one human poop so many times? Instead of a neatly folding their onesies, you dump their clean laundry into the drawer and call it good. As for the crib, well, maybe one day your baby will sleep in it. Probably? Hopefully? Who knows? You can’t think straight because you haven’t slept longer than four hours in months. But you do manage to frame a picture of they teeny-tiny handprints and hang it on the wall.
By the time you have a toddler, they have started redecorating their room on a regular basis. Swoosh! They knock all the picture books off the bottom shelf in one quick swoop. Dump! The toy box is no match for their curiosity. Cause and effect is the most fun game of all. What happens when they hold a sippy cup upside down and shake it really hard? They’ll find out, as soon as you’re not looking.
Elementary school kids are much more predicable. You teach them to make their bed. You show them how to put their clothes away. You expect them to put dirty laundry into the basket and shlep it to the washing machine. But do they? Sometimes. Putting chores on their allowance chart helps, but only to a certain degree. Every time you go in there to tuck them in at night, you risk walking over a minefield of Legos.
At some point, usually around fourth grade, discussions happen about choices you made when they were five. Why did you buy that butterfly artwork? Why did you give them a Star Wars comforter? They don’t like any of it because it’s too babyish. The framed picture of their infant handprints is the first thing to come down.
Enter the teenager years, which becomes a choose-your-own-adventure of bedroom decorating. One kid does nothing at all, and allows their room to slowly disintegrate into a smellier version of their childhood bedroom. Another covers every inch — even the ceiling — with decorations acquired from ripped-up magazines and thrift shops. Or maybe the teenager is the neat-freak type who maintains a living space that’s Instagram-worthy. The one constant is that you’re not in charge any more.
Sleep well, little ones. Enjoy your space. It’s a privilege to witness the evolution.
Jennifer Bardsley publishes books under her own name and the pseudonym Louise Cypress. Find her online on Instagram @jenniferbardsleyauthor, on Twitter @jennbardsley or on Facebook as Jennifer Bardsley Author. Email her at teachingmybabytoread@gmail.com.
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