This is what happens when you blink

I was shopping for some pants for Elise the other day, and as I looked through rack after rack of clothes, I was becoming increasingly frustrated. Why couldn't I find anything in her size?

Then I looked up an it dawned on me that I was in the wrong section. "Baby", the overhead sign said. My daughter is no longer a baby, ergo I cannot find her size in the baby section. Gone are the days of the onesies, and cute outfits that come already matching so it takes the guesswork away from people who are fashionably-challenged like me.

Feeling rather stupid, I toddled on over to the "Toddler" section, marvelling at how quickly time was sliding past me.

What happened? When did my little girl make that transition from baby to toddler?

It must have been on one of the days where I was at the end of my rope, so I put her in the pack and play outside of the bathroom, and took a 20 minute shower, just so I could get some time alone. But I remember peeking out through the shower curtain, looking past the steam and watching her solemnly looking at a book, and she still looked very much like a baby to me.

Or it could have happened any of the times when I was in the kitchen trying to prepare dinner with her hanging around underfoot. I'd get so frustrated with her, that I would send her out to her playroom, asking her to let me be for 15 minutes. But as I peered around the corner and saw Elise laying beside our dog Seven, absently stroking her fur, I could still see that tiny, helpless infant that we brought home from the hospital just over two years ago.

As a mother of a small child, it is so easy to become weary of the work that goes into raising them. Some days I think it would be less painful to repeatedly smash myself over the head with a frying pan than to deal with the many moods of said child.

Some days I want to lock myself up in a closet and pray that Elise won't find me.

Some days I feel like I deserve the World's Worst Mother Award because all I want to do is sleep in until noon, get up, eat some candy, have a two hour bath, followed by a two hour nap and not have anybody ever need anything from me ever again.

And then I have the moments where I realize my baby is a baby no longer and is, in fact, a toddler. And the realization hits me so hard that I can scarcely breathe.

And all the whining, the moods, the tantrums, the screaming, the clinginess, the short naps, the split drinks, the messes that need cleaning up, the waking up in the middle of the night; all of it seems so insignificant when you start to comprehend that this time with them is so very short, and so precious that instead of complaining about the negative aspects of it, I need to be celebrating all that I love about being Elise's Mom.

And there really is so much that I do love, but that is another post for another time.

For now I will just rejoice in the fact that I do have the greatest job. It's not always sunshine and roses, but there is nothing else in the world that I'd rather do.