Sometimes when someone dies, we consider that we should have spent more time with them. That we should have treasured them more while they were here. Prioritizing people and relationships is a good thing, an important thing, especially in our fast-paced, workaholic world. It occurred to me then, that small children demand we spend more time with them not just because they need care, which they do, but because we want to know them in whatever stage they are, before that stage “dies.” My four-year-old niece will not always wander around the house randomly singing out “la la la,” and chuckling to herself, but it is something fun to behold. We benefit from seeing this and from living in the moment, even while we continue to frame having kids as being a lot of work, and costing much, which it also does. Perhaps when we have fewer children around, which in modern western society is certainly the case, we don’t live in the moment quite as much.
On the flip side, I might be over thinking things, because in a bygone era when people had lots of kids, it’s hard to consider that they would have had any time to really notice these small “la la la” moments. Perhaps noticing these things are one of God’s gifts to visiting Aunties, gifts I will happily accept.
Why this came to me as I drifted off to sleep last night, I don’t know.
by 
These small “la la la” moments are there for us busy mamas, too – when we stop to notice. One of the best things about life, for sure.
Here’s one of my favorite passages about parenthood/childhood from one of my favorite books (this comes from and essay about it so only the things in quotes are from Mrs. Miniver):::
So much of the fun of parenthood lies “in watching the children re-make, with delighted wonder, one’s own discoveries”. On Christmas morning, when they burst in shortly after six to open their stockings: how odd, she reflects, that the tangerine in the toe of the stocking lingers even though children get a good supply of fruit all the year round.
This is one of the moments — when the stockings are being opened, and the dawn is breaking, and she can hear the distant tinkle of teacups — which Mrs. Miniver feels:
“…paid off at a single stroke the debit side of parenthood: the morning sickness and the quite astonishing pain; the pram in the passage, the cold mulish glint in the cook’s eye; the holiday nurse who had been in the best families; the pungent white mice, the shrivelled caterpillars; the plasticine on the door-handles . . . the alarms and emergencies, the swallowed button, the inexplicable earache, the ominous rash appearing on the eve of a journey; the school bills and the dentist’s bills; the shortened step, the tempered pace, the emotional compromises, the divided loyalties, the adventures continually forsworn”