One of the Best Pieces of Parenting Advice I've Gotten

I posted this as a comment on a friends blog but I think it deserves its own post here:


Ya know the single best piece of parenting advice I think I've ever got I actually overheard at a friends baby shower. There was an elderly grandmother there and her advice to the mom-to-be was this: Take every chance you can to hold that baby and to cherish that moment, just really enjoy it. She said that they grow so fast and one day your arms will ache to hold that baby again. You will hold other babies but you never get to hold *that* baby again so enjoy it and cherish it. She also said that her daughter used to cling to her skirts and drive her crazy and she found that the solution was simply to take some time every day when she got clingy and sit down and cuddle with her for a few minutes in the rocking chair. She just needed to be held for a bit and then everything was okay.

And I've found that really helped me to cope with all the craziness and the occasional (or regular) suckiness of my day - when I do get a minute to just grab Caleb and give him a cuddle and I try to push all my worries out of my head and just sit there and smell his hair and really enjoy the snuggle. Its almost a form of meditation for me now. I'm gonna have to find something new when he gets bigger and is too cool to cuddle with me...