Seeing the world for the first time
The greatest joy of living with toddlers is seeing the world through their eyes for the first time. You relearn all the things about life you’d stopped even caring about.
Your hard exterior, built up over the years of being an adult—of having your heart broken, being disappointed over and over again, seeing all the pain in the world—starts to break away and you wonder when you became so cynical. Now, with this two year old by your side, you’re seeing the wonder in things you’ve never noticed before.
The first taste of ice cream. The first concert. The first time they truly understand that some people speak a different language to them. You can see, as clear as if they were slotting the final piece of the puzzle in place, the realisation dawn on their face and you wonder about the process it took to get them there. Then you try to imagine what it must be like to learn something, anything for the very first time.
You see the delight over a rainbow. They shriek and jump up and down and wave their arms and you smile at how the smallest things can make them so happy, but then they look to you to see if you’re seeing what they’re seeing and suddenly you realise that rainbow isn’t a small thing at all—it’s actually the loveliest thing ever. How could you have forgotten that?
One day your child will tell you how planes in the sky are going very fast but they look slow from down on the ground because we are so far away and you’ll think, ‘Who taught you that?’ And the answer is: no one. He figured it out by himself, because kids are so much smarter than you give them credit for.
It’s rewards like this that make all the hard parts worth it. You will want to grab their dimpled little hand and set off on an endless adventure because life is simply sweeter when you’re experiencing it with a curious toddler.