You're Gonna Miss This

You know the song by Trace Adkins?

You're gonna miss this.  
You're gonna want this back
You're gonna wish these days
Hadn't gone by so fast.
These are some good times
So take a good look around
You may not know this now
But you're gonna miss this.

I get this concept.  I really do.  But to be honest, when we look back at these things we miss, we don't think about the hard things.  We only remember the good things.  I miss when my older kids were snuggly chubby babies.  They were so cute and giggly.  They would smile huge when they saw me and reach their chubby hands up to touch my face.   But I honestly don't remember all the long sleepless nights and the stretches of screaming when they were upset about something.  I look back and think, Why can't my baby now sleep like his older siblings did when they were babies?  They all slept nice and soundly through the night and rarely had a night where I was up all night with them.  But then I look at old blog posts or journal entries and realize that was not the case.

So yes, I will miss this period of time when my children are young.  But I won't miss some of the hard things about it.

I won't miss the nights when I can't get my baby to stop crying and can't figure out what's wrong with him.  I won't miss the endless diaper changing and spit up.  I won't miss having to spoon feed him several times a day.

I won't miss when my older kids call me from school telling me they are sick and the anxiety that shoots through me at that moment when I hope that nobody else gets what they have and that they won't miss too much school or be too sick.  I won't miss when they clobber their sibling over the head because their sibling isn't sharing a certain toy. 

There are definitely things I won't miss.  In fact, I will probably block the hard things from my memory, as evidenced by the fact I already do it.