(Photo Credit: Lara Salvo with Vienna Hayden // @ViennaHayden)

It’s been a wild few months. Thanks to listening to some really inspiring audiobooks (I promise I’ll share them all here soon) and generally finding myself again, I’ve been doing some really cool stuff in personal life and the blogging world. If you hadn’t noticed, I’ve revamped my YouTube channel with some gorgeous channel art, and I’m really enjoying the content I’m making over there. I’ve also been really enjoying the content that I’ve been making here.

But I realized that my blog is starting to feel very… curated. I am writing interesting, useful articles that are great for Pinterest sharing. I’m making fun, educational videos. But I’m not feeling like the real me is showing up on here. I mean, my tone is still me. The writing is still me. But I haven’t felt like I’m really sharing what’s going on, our normal life struggles or day to day life stuff. So, here it is – a personal update.

Let’s start with Harley. She is amazing. No really, I know every parent thinks that about their kid, and that’s great, but Harley is remarkable. She is so ridiculously smart and funny. She speaks in full sentences, telling me stories or making demands or generally just chatting away (you can see her in action in a recent Facebook Live). She loves to play with her books and her tools. She often tells me that she can fix things or save things. She wants to be a doctor. Or an astronaut. Or a Rescue Bot (new generation Transformers). Or a dinosaur.

With all this incredible intellect, she is still such a kind and helpful kid. She loves to help, and often when we need to lure her from one room to the next I’ll tell her that daddy needs her help, with Dean crying out for help, so that she will rush off to his office and give me a few moments of peace. Yes, we manipulate her to get a break. She’s still a 2.5-year-old, after all.

I think that’s the part that I have to keep reminding myself about. She isn’t even 3 yet.

At her school, kids are expected to be potty trained by 3 so that they can move up to the 3s. She isn’t there yet. She likes to pee in the toilet, especially when we go out somewhere or before bedtime. But that’s about it. It isn’t consistent, it isn’t reliable, and she’s still very much in nappies.

If it weren’t for her school and their thing about needing to be potty trained to move up a year, I wouldn’t really care. But the thing is, emotionally and mentally, she is so developed and ahead, but with this, she just isn’t. I honestly just don’t think she’s ready for it. She has all the skills and I think she understands what needs to happen, but she just isn’t ready for that transition of becoming a big kid. And that’s okay.

It’s just odd, I think, BECAUSE of how advanced she is in other areas. I have to remind myself that she isn’t three yet. That she is really still a baby in so many ways. Sure, she can talk and eat and walk and play and boss us around all day. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that she’s ready for the next thing.

Oh, and I didn’t mention, her school told me that she can’t jump. I joked that she’s also super white and that might be the reason. But of course, when the school says something, I spend an afternoon googling things like “developmental milestones jumping” or “what age should my kid be able to jump” or “activities to encourage my toddler to jump”. Because that’s how I need to spend my time – panicking that my kid has developmental delays because she won’t jump off a step or over a sticker or whatever.

Combine these two things, and of course I was feeling a bit worried. I mean, does this mean there’s a physical connection issue? Should I be taking her to an occupational therapist or something to see if she’s struggling to connect with her body? Or, you know, should I just accept that she’s a 2.5-year-old who is focused on a lot of cerebral stuff? That it’s been way too hot to take her to the park where she can play and jump and try out all those kinds of movements. That jumping just isn’t something we do at home – seriously, apart from playing with your kid, when was the last time YOU jumped in normal life?

Anyway, it feels kind of emblematic of stuff going on in the rest of our lives. I got a new computer, and life is really looking up in many ways. I’m excited about this blog. I’m excited about my YouTube stuff. I’m excited about what the coming year holds for me in terms of freelance work and potential options to work with people I like again. I’m keen to see what happens with Dean’s work. I’m really enjoying all these amazing women I’ve been meeting locally, building some lovely friendships. But NONE of that stuff happens overnight. It all takes time. It simply takes days and weeks and months to develop, no matter how much time, energy and support I put into it all.

So yes, there are things in my life that feel like they’re moving at different speeds. Harley just needs time to grow into the idea of potty training, as I need time to grow into the new stuff I’m doing online. Harley just needs time to practice jumping and find her feet, just as we need time to find our feet in new ventures. We can do all the right things to move things along as best as we can, but nothing can substitute for time and patience.

Life is moving at different speeds. Some things are going so ridiculously fast, making the other things feel absurdly slow. And yet, in the end, we will get there.

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