We had my friend, her husband, and their baby come visit us this weekend. I also got to catch up with my friend one on one over tea, and that was nice and relaxing. It was also just nice to get out of the apartment and dress up a little bit while also just not being completely baby focused… Or focused on finding a nanny. I honestly never really thought about how time-consuming finding a nanny would be, but alas, here I am. Finding a nanny is nearly a full-time job in itself.

It’s funny when you think about how the dynamics change once you have kids. I always knew about this and was aware about this in theory, but in practice, it’s definitely something that you have to get used to. When my friend originally booked this trip, she said that she and her husband could have done so many things without the baby if she had left the baby at home with her mom… But she really wanted her baby to come to meet my baby. She wanted to do things like Broadway shows, museums, afternoon tea… We compromised and we did afternoon tea and left the babies with our husbands. But the Broadway show was never going to happen because her baby gets stranger danger, so even when I offered to babysit, she said that there was no way her baby was going to let that happen. My friend is also someone who rarely checks luggage unless she is traveling internationally and plans to buy a lot of things, but on this trip, they checked a bag because of all of the things that they have to take with them because of their baby.

While all of this can be annoying and at times frustrating, as my former night nurse always said… All of these things last for a finite time, and then they eventually end. So while we can be frustrated at not being able to see a show or have a tasting menu when we have our baby with us, our baby is only going to be a baby for a set amount of time. And that time will eventually end. I am already looking at videos and pictures of my baby when she was a newborn and comparing them to how big she is now. And it already makes me a little bit sad to see how quickly she has grown as well as how quickly time has flown. She was once this teeny tiny baby in my arms (or, really, HANDS at that point!) who barely weighed 6 pounds. Now, she is definitely double that weight. I am trying to cherish every moment as much as I possibly can. Soon, she will no longer be a baby I can hold in my arms.