The baby is slowly fading into sleep in my arms as I mouth the words “go get your stuff,”. It’s 7:45pm and Dad is on toddler bedtime duty. As I sneak out of the dining room where E is finally asleep, I hear the telltale sound of the lacrosse game hype music being turned up in the car. The stark difference in my childrens’ ages hits me yet again.

For all of the exhaustion, I sometimes feel like I’m enjoying the best (and the worst) of both words: I’m enveloped in all of the tiny human squishiness and toddler giggles at the same time as I’m able to enjoy the independence and personality of a mostly-formed person. Being Mom to an infant, a toddler, and a teenager simultaneously wasn’t how I imagined my life but the juxtaposition of these stages brings me so much perspective.

In the endless wake-ups and parade of meltdowns, it’s easy to wish it all away. In fact, it’s hard not to wish it all away. In the last two and a half years, many nights have seen my tears and frustration as I willed a small child to sleep. I’ve slept on the floor next to the crib. I’ve slept in the damn crib. And I’ve reflected on how deeply I missed the little moments when F was no longer little.

As our kids grow up, I think we forget (or minimize or maybe even block out the trauma of) the tough times. The relentlessness of pregnancy and newborn care; the absolute illogical bullshit of toddlers. We don’t remember the aching back or the sleep-deprivation headache. If we’re lucky (and we were lucky), we settle into later wake-ups and more complex and exciting movies and television shows. Conversations become deeper and more interesting. The fights and struggles grow the way feet do: faster than everyone can keep up.

And then we romanticize the past.

“Little kids, little problems” often reverberates in my brain, having been said to me so many times over the years when I lamented a particularly tough childhood phase with F. The perspective gained from the juxtaposition of having both little and big kids is that, at least in our case, they really are all little problems. A messy room. A thrown snack. A first crush. A diaper blow out. A slammed door. A failed test. A meal refused. We’re lucky that our problems are only as big as we want to make them out to be.

I’ve had grown-up conversations with my teenager while breastfeeding a newborn with Cars playing on the television in the background. I’ve jumped from hockey practice to reading Z is for Zamboni and switched from Drake to Blippi on the Google Home more times than I can count. Some days I feel like one of those crazy rubber balls, the little ones that seem to bounce harder and faster and in defiance of gravity at high speed that always came in birthday party treat bags, having bounced from stage to stage to stage and back again and again and again all day long.

What strikes me most is how my belief that I had a favourite stage has changed. Because living through these distinct stages at the same time has shown me how special they all are. How beautiful. How impossible they can all feel. How incredibly quickly they pass. How much there is to love and loathe about each phase. How much there is to it all.

And how much still lies ahead.