It Gets Easier.

My days are numbered. The Tiny Human is learning to scoot. And she has one message for her parents:

“I am not a floor-baby.”

It is probably my fault. I knew from the beginning that she might end up as our only child. So I held her. Every waking moment. And every sleeping one. And when I wasn’t holding her, someone else was:

Fast forward to now when she’s face down on the floor, reaching for a toy just out of her grasp, hollering. I want to do it for her.

But I know she can scoot to the toy on her own. She, however, doesn’t.

She scoots all the time when isn’t paying attention. She ends up on the other side of the room without even thinking about it. But if she’s frustrated, it’s like asking her to swim the length of the Atlantic.

Which reminds me a little of myself.

When I first started writing, eeking out a newspaper column was like drowning. It took me two hours to type 250 words. It took me one year to write my first book. It probably took me ten minutes to sign my name on a receipt. (So that last one was a little exaggerated.)

Then it got easier.

I don’t know when it happened… but somewhere along the way I started to scoot. Then I started to crawl. Then I had a child, and typing my column became a sprint of 15 minutes to the finish line.

It gets easier. That’s what I want to tell you. And that’s what I want to tell the Tiny Human. Keep at it. Keep practicing. And pretty soon Mommy’s gonna wish she’d bought those fancy socket protectors after all…

But hey, I always thought her hair would be curly like Daddy’s...