A game where the rules are constantly changing

That's what parenting is really like, isn't it? Parenting is like trying to learn a game where the rules are constantly changing.  My two and a half year old has finally decided to sleep again.  I write this as I am watching her playing in her crib on our monitor.  She's obviously out to prove me wrong.  When we brought her home from Haiti over a year ago at 21 months, she slept like a champ.  Plunk her down in her crib, walk out of the room, and she'd close her eyes and drift off to sleep without as little as a whimper or a wiggle.  Fast forward 9 or so months and she decided that crib time equals wiggle time and absolutely refused to nap. In addition, she rarely fell asleep before she'd been in her bed for 2-3 hours.  It's astonishing that I am not bald, because her antics had me pulling my hair out for 4 months straight!  The past week, though, all of a sudden she's back to her old sleep habits, mostly anyway.  I was doing the dishes today after I had put her down and began thinking about a friend of mine who has been really struggling with her daughter's behavior lately.  Her daughter has some special needs, so sometimes traditional advice just doesn't apply.  But it made me start thinking of parenting as seasons of change.  When you are in the midst of a season with your child and they are not eating, or not sleeping, or not using the potty, or whatever and you feel like its never going to change just remember that it probably will.  Or if it doesn't change, you'll find better ways of handling it.  And then when it changes, it'll be something new.  Each milestone reached brings on a new challenge.  I've found recently, though, after a long season of struggle as a parent, that I'd forgotten what it really is all about:  savoring the little moments.  I'd gotten so locked up inside me head with worrying over my children's behavior, that I'd forgotten to enjoy the laughter (regardless of whatever inappropriate thing my boys had done to start it), the little boy kisses, the wild imaginations, the little girl dancing to music only she can hear.  As the lady who stopped me in Chick-fil-a earlier this week reminded me, "They are only little for such a short time.  Enjoy them now."