Driving to the doctor’s office the other day, I saw it – our old home away from home. The toy park. Our once beloved, now forgotten spot that my daughter and I visited at least once a week for years, whiling away hours pushing plastic lawn mowers, ducking in and out of playhouses and going back and forth on swings. 

I carted her to the toy park as a near-newborn, where we’d watch the toddlers swarming the collection of gently used backyard toys. Naive new mom that I was, I couldn’t wait for my child to join their crawling-stumbling-running ranks. 

Before the year was out she was practicing walking by pushing a bubble popper across the grass, then going in and out of playhouses and up and down slides like a pro. A year after sitting with my newborn I was chasing my toddler, then chasing faster as she got more capable, then chasing less as I learned I could trust her with the basics of small-child behavior. And then? 

Without realizing it, we moved on. There were other playgrounds, other adventures. There was preschool and elementary school and the start of organized activities. And still there, under the sleepy old trees at the west end of town, is the toy park, where I can only believe it is now beloved by another wave of babies and toddlers and their doting grown-ups. Our wave has moved on. When I noticed the sign the other day, I realized with a start that we haven’t been to the toy park in years. 

I couldn’t see time back then. The year leading up to mommy hood was like a carnival of stress, with a major move, my husband’s struggles to find employment and me attempting to hold down the fort while working a job that had me unintentionally waking up at 3 am every day to make a mental list of fires to put out. It all fell apart, or rather, I did, when my sweet girl was born, and after coming back from mental health grad school my confidence in myself to navigate the world had shifted and shrunk. 

All I could focus on was taking care of my baby and myself, one nap and one bottle and one load of laundry at a time. My four months of maternity leave, in which I gradually trusted myself to venture further from home and do more with my new little teammate, grew into its own sweet lifetime. Sometime that spring, my favorite consignment shop held a sale, and it felt absurd stocking up on 18 and 24 month old clothing for next year. The tights and shirts and pants seemed impossibly huge for my baby love to ever fit into. 

I have a theory that zero to three swallows you whole. And by “you” I mean parents and caregivers like me, who long for parenthood and joyfully throw themselves in deep, rearranging every possible facet of life to savor each day with their new little sweetheart. One day after Gymboree – sorry, I realize how obnoxiously Starbucks mom that sounds – baby love and I dropped by the nearby grocery store, me chattering and her cooing as I bucked her into the cart. An older woman pushing her own cart approached, and announced ominously, “Enjoy your time with that little girl. Someday she’s going to grow up and go to school and leave you.”

Of course I knew that, in the same way I know that the earth is round and airplanes can fly. Which is to say, I knew but didn’t understand. And didn’t really want to, honestly. Work had taken a backseat and I was happily suspended in baby-mom time. 

Doting on every moment like I did, it’s not surprising that I was unprepared for the transition from toddler into little kid. My daughter, however, charged right out of toddlerhood and into the next phase, aka the preschool years, aka GO time. Cause GOING is what you do when you’re lucky enough to have a healthy little kid by your side – and go we did, whether it was jumping in leaves in our own backyard or exploring new kid-friendly haunts all around town. Listening to my child speak in full sentences and watching her navigate the world with growing confidence, I realized the baby years were behind us, but there was precious little time to reflect because the little kid years were just as busy as the baby ones. The time I used to spend singing “Itsy Bitsy Spider” and juggling baby wipes was quickly replaced by playing games, making art projects and heading off to play dates. (Oh yeah, and going back to work full time.)

My daughter is now at an age where I have distinct memories of being the age she is now. Like my Pippi Longstocking Halloween costume in 2nd grade, the clunkiness of the scrub-brushes my grandfather rigged for me to wear on my feet and the tug of my mom braiding wire into my hair to make my braids stick out. My body still holds the visceral memories of making and wearing and going to school in that costume. Meanwhile, here in the now we created my daughter’s 2nd grade Halloween costume, shopping carefully for the pieces to go with the character she created, a midevil warrior she calls “the snake-sword owl tamer”.

Maybe her visceral memories of this time will be standing patiently for me to tighten up the leather laces of her leg armor, and then gradually shedding pieces of costume during Trunk-or-Treat under the warm Georgia sun. One of mine will be the feeling of her, letting go of my hand with growing ease as we get close to school in the morning, and giving me my hug on the sidewalk so she can run up the steps by herself. Because after all, she’s 7, going on 8. She doesn’t have to hold my hand to navigate the world anymore. 

We’re at the age where what once was painful becomes practical. About a year ago, I pared down the baby clothes, keeping only those that she might want if she chooses to become a mother herself. I’ve given away a small mountain of baby toys, and this year I finally re-homed the stroller that we roamed the neighborhood, the town and Disney World in. Up next, she’s got a closet of dresses she hasn’t worn since the start of the pandemic, but they are dresses for a little girl, not the girl she is now. This is part of the teary-proudness of mommy hood – letting go of the accoutrements of your baby, long after the physical reality of your baby has morphed into a full-on kid. 

I would not trade this kid for anything in the world. And, this is not the life I pictured. I thought I’d have it all, simultaneously. I thought I’d have a fulfilling career that paused, or at least back-burnered, for five or ten years to raise multiple kids. I thought my husband’s career would hum along seamlessly and money would never, ever be a problem at all. I did not count on asshole bosses and career heartbreaks. I didn’t count on a move to a city where we knew no one and had no family, or my post-baby breakdown, or the fact that my husband never really wanted more than one baby at all.

And now, I sit here obsessing over some Major Life Decisions. I don’t know what to do about them. But I know I get to – and need to – embrace the reality of this kid and this life, whatever direction it goes, over the haziness of any fantasy. 

In the end I don’t want to stop my girl or slow her down. We milked those baby years – he he, no pun intended! – for all they were worth. Lucky us, we’ve got a lifetime of growth and adventure to go.