The actual title of this is "The Importance of Getting your Girls Out There Early".
We are in a chapter right now that keeps us close to home. Even when we travel, we are going to familiar places and there, staying relatively close to home. There is naptime. We're packing lunches and wiping counters, pouring over 3rd grade math and fawning over fish paintings from preschool. We are swim team and swim lesson aficionados. We are Sunday dinner people. We are teaching our kids to play cards in the hopes of many fun nights ahead. We are small town life. It's beautiful and rich and we know we will look back on these simple days with a sweet tug in years to come. But. It IS small. Days are full of service and supremely unglamorous work. Days and weeks run together in what I call building block days (more on that another time).
When I think about the long chapter we are in right now, I am incredibly grateful for it (after all, we choose this chapter again with every baby, setting the egg timer back, restarting the process and the clock). What I've been ruminating on, is how thankful I am for the chapters that came before, the adventures and travel, the beautiful places and experiences. The tastes of the world.
I was lucky enough to see some of the world before settling into a life of raising kids on the daily. I've seen the Sidney Opera House and drank kava in Fiji. I've climbed around London and eaten my way through Italy. I think I appreciate it so much because now, I am content in the staying close to home. The knowledge that I've been some incredible far-flung places helps me keep in mind that they exist, I've been before, and I can go again. Those early experiences taught me that I am strong. I am a traveler. That stays with me even now, when I am not traveling.
Parents, encourage your girls to GO. Take the trip, book the flight. Volunteer or do missionary work. Study abroad. Do the internship in the big city and couch surf with your cousin. Take someone you admire out to breakfast if you are in the same area. Take a week to see how Aunt Janie runs her practice on the other side of the country. Be smart, be safe, choose wisely. But GO. It all stays with you, tiny little vitamins nurturing your adventurous self while you tackle the quieter long-term adventures closer to home.
I'm grateful.... because I've gone, I am content to stay.
We are in a chapter right now that keeps us close to home. Even when we travel, we are going to familiar places and there, staying relatively close to home. There is naptime. We're packing lunches and wiping counters, pouring over 3rd grade math and fawning over fish paintings from preschool. We are swim team and swim lesson aficionados. We are Sunday dinner people. We are teaching our kids to play cards in the hopes of many fun nights ahead. We are small town life. It's beautiful and rich and we know we will look back on these simple days with a sweet tug in years to come. But. It IS small. Days are full of service and supremely unglamorous work. Days and weeks run together in what I call building block days (more on that another time).
When I think about the long chapter we are in right now, I am incredibly grateful for it (after all, we choose this chapter again with every baby, setting the egg timer back, restarting the process and the clock). What I've been ruminating on, is how thankful I am for the chapters that came before, the adventures and travel, the beautiful places and experiences. The tastes of the world.
I was lucky enough to see some of the world before settling into a life of raising kids on the daily. I've seen the Sidney Opera House and drank kava in Fiji. I've climbed around London and eaten my way through Italy. I think I appreciate it so much because now, I am content in the staying close to home. The knowledge that I've been some incredible far-flung places helps me keep in mind that they exist, I've been before, and I can go again. Those early experiences taught me that I am strong. I am a traveler. That stays with me even now, when I am not traveling.
Parents, encourage your girls to GO. Take the trip, book the flight. Volunteer or do missionary work. Study abroad. Do the internship in the big city and couch surf with your cousin. Take someone you admire out to breakfast if you are in the same area. Take a week to see how Aunt Janie runs her practice on the other side of the country. Be smart, be safe, choose wisely. But GO. It all stays with you, tiny little vitamins nurturing your adventurous self while you tackle the quieter long-term adventures closer to home.
I'm grateful.... because I've gone, I am content to stay.
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