Parenting is highly skilled labour
With Anna we have had so many beautiful and fun moments, little adventures, and great memories already. But there has also been probably even more crying, sleepless nights, misunderstandings, not realizing what is uncomfortable for her, and just being pretty clueless as a parent of how to help her sometimes.
Recently, Jetaime has been walking Anna around the lake beside our place each morning. Yesterday she met the parents of one of our students and talked with them for a while. They are from Korea and the mom doesn’t speak too much English but she offered to take care of Anna while Jetaime talked with the dad. The dad mentioned casually how the mom was so pro-active with their kids that he probably only heard them cry less than 10 times over 18 years of them growing up. Whenever Anna was fussy she knew many different methods to help calm her down. She was also really perceptive about when she needed a change, to feed, or was just uncomfortable. Even making a sling to put Anna on her front or back was so simple and second nature. It was encouraging to know there are solutions to all the problems we are facing, but also a bit intimidating to realize how little we know and how far there still is to go.