Baby don't care, baby's got time

I had a revelation the other day about little kids. I was playing with the Pepper and she really wanted to play with something delicate from our shelves she shouldn't be touching. We went back and forth about it for a long time. And I of course was getting impatient about the exchange. I wanted to spend our time together doing other things, more fun things. But the Pepper didn't care about that. She was totally in the moment. That's when I realized one of the big differences between myself and my child: our concept of time.

As a typical busy adult I think of my life in terms of time. I need to be here at a certain time, I have an hour to do this, I need to schedule time to do that. I've even described parenting to some of my non-parent friends as essentially just needing to get really good at time management. But while parenting to me has meant I need to be even better about using my time efficiently, my baby has a totally different experience. She is just being. She has nothing to do. No places to be. Nothing she needs to accomplish. She can spend as long as she wants fussing about taking a nap, or trying to reach that knick-knack because...why not? She isn't thinking about how if she doesn't nap now she won't be able to later because we need to be at a birthday party. Or that I only have an hour to play with her in between work and chores and we should make the most of it. She is always just in the moment. 

Something about realizing this has actually helped me be more patient, more in the moments with her. And really, it should be about just being together, whatever it is we're doing.

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