The Happiest Parts of Parenthood and Life on the Road
Miya has seen and perhaps experienced more than many have in their lifetime in the first six months of her precious life.
In the last three months, she’s stared in awe at a drag queen applying her makeup in Paraguay, became a regular at a hipster coffeehouse in Buenos Aires, and breathed in the fresh mountain air of Patagonia as a teddy bear.
To watch her grow within the context of these moments in different countries is sometimes challenging to put into words. Our life isn’t flying from one country to another or taking our baby to the mountains daily.
We do these things in super slow motion -- completely “baby-proofed”. Like every parent, we too experience days “inside", which might seem monotonous. But these are days that we cherish because these are everyday moments with her too.
The real tenderness of our days together is encapsulated in our own memories, somewhat captured by a series of photographs, videos or a single story.
Only Matt and I will know the specificity of these quiet, joyful moments -- and what it’s truly like to be parents to this sweet, innocent little girl. But anyone with children will have their own story – one with its own laughs, moments of vulnerability, surprises, and the rawest love.
Matt tells me often to cherish these moments, and I know I should because they will disappear. Every day, I feel her hands and feet growing bigger and her behaviours changing ever so slightly. I try to remember how these things felt like a day ago, a week ago, or even so long ago when she was just a newborn.
There are too many things to describe, moments caught in time, memories locked in my brain -- like how she grabs at our faces and hands, climbs all over us, launches herself almost mid-air to flip to tummy time or burrows under our clothes to play hide and seek. And my favourites -- how she clutches her little hand onto my hand to sleep -- or always chooses a diaper, a piece of paper towel or my hair over her fancier toys – babbles for more avocado – and how she fixates on the leaves of a tree and will grab at branches to try to eat the leaves.
I love how she giggles and screams whenever we go to a new place with a new bed and ceiling to stare at. Miya has this attuned sense of gratitude that you wouldn’t think possible for a baby.
And then there’s her sounds – her many, many sounds. There was the first time she burst into spontaneous laughter from us grunting and moving vigorously. She grunts, trills (a deep gargle of the throat), and screams like a dinosaur. As of late, she babbles – first it was “oom mah, now it’s a lot of “he, he, he -- ya, ya, ya -- and da, da, da” amid breathless panting.
Even to Matt, I probably don’t say it enough, but parenthood is breathtaking. To have these feelings as a parent and to experience parenthood is an all-consuming feeling of warmth.
Matt vocalises this out loud more often -- parenthood has clarified what he wants and who he wants to be.
It’s certainly easy to describe how we trip up as parents – from the dry skin around her nose, sleep regression, tantrums, or constipation from switching to solid foods. We could then at least identify with parents who don’t take their kids to six countries within six months of coming out of the womb.
But neither Matt nor I regret our decisions. She’s processing life, learning in the world’s biggest classroom surrounded by kind people, animals, and scenery beyond belief – all the colours, sounds and movements a baby could absorb.
And so, I’d rather acknowledge the moments where our baby girl makes our hearts feel whole – like this week when she sat behind Matt in a hiking backpack and stared up into the dramatic spires of the Los Cuernos mountains in Torres Del Paine National Park. Who knows what she was thinking, but she stared all wide-eyed, and every once in a while, she would let out a little scream or babble.
Seeing life through her curious, wandering eyes reminds us what it means to be in the moment and fall in love with the world and the idea of life again.
It used to be Matt and I doing that for each other – with our travels, work, and being with each other. But now, there’s no part of our journey, our narrative, that doesn’t include Miya. As she changes with every next day, we can’t wait to see what she’ll do and where we’ll be next.
RELATED STORIES
