Learning to relax...

These pictures have nothing to do with this post, just from a little outing we took a couple weeks back.

Today I took the kids to the park. 

I ran back and forth between the two - pushing swings, playing tag, jumping over "monster" tree roots and helping with monkey bars. 

As I was doing all that, I couldn't help but notice another mother, with a 2-week old baby girl (we chit-chatted here and there) wrapped up tight against her and probably what was a 2-year-old boy running all around the playground.

It was her comments toward him, two in particular, that struck me. Among telling him which slides to go on and where to play, I heard "Wins, smooth out your hair." "Ok, time to go home... you're too excited."

How sad, I thought. 

He's at the park, playing in the sun, getting sweaty. His hair is going to get messed up.

He's making friends, jumping across the bouncy bridge. 

Hands will flail. Bumps and bruises are going to happen.
He's a child. 

He's having fun.
 

Maybe it's because this idea has been on my mind more so lately that this stuck out to me today, as I've been trying to relax about things and not worry so much myself. 

After all, they're only children for such a little while.

It made me wonder, though, how many times have I been that mom - the mom who is too uptight, too worried, too bothered to let my children just play, and be children? Probably more often than I'd like. 

Motherhood is an amazing calling. One that teaches me more about myself than I ever could learn on my own. I am grateful for these moments I have that help me recognize and be aware of what's really important. They give me the desire to be better than I was the day before and to try harder.

I love this quote I came across a few weeks ago thanks to Melissa. 

"You are worried about seeing him spend his early years in doing nothing. 

What! 

Is it nothing to be happy? 

Nothing to skip, play, and run around all day long? 

Never in his life will he be so busy again."

 -Jean Jacques Rousseau

Needless to say, there have been more dirty feet lately because my kids like to go barefoot, and it's really notthat big of a deal to bathe them every.single.night. Really.

I hope when my kids look back and think of their childhood, they remember it being full of "go for it", "yes" and "why not" instead of "no", "don't", and "enough."