I have no idea what motherhood will look like in five, ten or fifteen years, but I do know that I won’t ever want to miss a moment to snuggle with you.

It’s another dark, damp and cold morning, I can hear my alarm clock going off, but even through the foggy haze of morning, I can tell that it’s far away. I open my eyes and realize that I’ve spent the night in my toddler’s bed, just one more minute turned into a full eight hour snooze and I can’t tell if I’m overtired, sore from sleeping in a toddler bed all night or if it was a good thing to have gone to bed at 8:00pm. What I do know is that I miss my little ones a lot these days (and know that they feel the same) so sometimes these late night snuggles, as “bad” of a habit as they seem, become the stolen moments we all need in our over scheduled, rushed and chaotic lives. Sometimes all we need is “just one more minute.”

Motherhood looks and feels a little different with each passing year and it’s so hard to put your finger on those moments when changes occur, those light bulbs that turn on, almost out of nowhere, letting you know that you are in a new stage, that things have changed and suddenly you’re in a new season; a completely new place. Sometimes those shifts come easy, you just go with it barely blinking an eye. Then there are times when the changes themselves bring about a whole batch of challenges, things that seem incredibly tough in that moment and you can’t see ahead.

I’ve come to a point on this motherhood journey where I find the pace to be a bit too fast for me, the hours become days the days weeks and the weeks months. I don’t like the speed of this part of our journey and it feels like time is moving faster than I want it to, but I know that I can’t slow it down. So, instead I’m stealing snuggles wherever I can and doing my best to savour those short slow moments we have.

Sometimes we make the time; taking a little bit longer to read a few more stories before bed, holding our little ones while they drink their morning milk or crawling in with our toddlers for a cuddle before nap. Other times life decides for us, we get run-down, sick or just too tire, and that tells us it’s time to slow down and steal those moments, because otherwise we will miss too much.

I’m not sure if we can blame any part of our lives when we are struggling with speed, but for me the there’s one thing that’s moved things along way too fast and made me think ahead a lot more than I’d like to. Going back to work this time around has been tough, the days feel long but my time feels more precious than ever because it’s broken up and I have to steal snuggles . Going back to work also means that I’m not spending my days with my little ones, instead we are rushing out of the house to get to different destinations each day and it feels like our time together has been take from me. On the one hand I am so happy that my children get to see their mommy doing and pursing the things that she’s passionate about, to demonstrate for them what it means to work hard, be pursue passions and do what you love,  but on the other hand I’ve started to really see how valuable our time is and how you can never really get that time back.

I so wish that I could end this post with a solution, some kind of resolution to this age-old-problem that parents; mothers and fathers alike, have faced for so long. But I don’t. Balancing our lives is such a complicated thing, sometimes you feel like you have it figured out and other times it’s totally off, and pursuing something so fluid isn’t really possible. So instead, I am making a conscious effort to be there, steal as many snuggles as I can and really be with my children when we are together because this is something I can do, this is something I know matters.

Our mornings are hectic, our evenings busy, but we are making it work in the best way that we know how. To read more about how we manage the mess and the mayhem head on over to Parent Life Network to read my latest post.

When you feel like you life is speeding-up too much, that time is getting away from you, what do you do to slow it down?

Wishing you sweet stolen snuggles and slow moments!

xo

Vanessa