🔗 No More Oppatoo

No More Oppatoo

But kids inspire love, such deep unconditional love. You love and treasure how they are, down to the smallest quirk. Then, suddenly, right in front of you, they change. While one might grow used to the slow, sad change of growing apart from an adult you love, this feels very different.

This post from Allen Pike has been sitting with me for a while. I've got 2 boys, 5 and 2.5 years old, and my wife and I get to see their personalities develop. Atticus (our 5 year old) used to be attached to his pacifier, calling for it before going to bed with adorable cries of "Paci!" and Finnian (the 2.5 year old) went through an adorable phase of saying "yep" to everything.

Right now Finnian is saying "That's awesome", endlessly singing songs like "Baby Shark", and "Jesus Loves Me", and going on and on about choosing the purple bath bomb. Atticus loves watching toy train videos on YouTube and hugging every stuffed animal he comes across and saying "nice !".

I know these phases will end someday, perhaps soon. For now they will be replaced with other super cute things. The day may will come when the new things are simply grammatically correct and no longer endearing in the way toddlers are. It seems parenting is a bittersweet endeavor.

Take pictures, shoot video, make audio recordings. The memories will only last in our minds for so long, but we can preserve them thanks to the pocket computers we all carry. I think that's one of the best parts about living in the time we do. We can always remember our kids as they were, while celebrating the people they become.