
When my son was a few months old, he went through a stretch where his sleep started to change. He’d been pretty consistently up to that point, sleeping more and more through the night, but then suddenly, he was sleeping less and getting a lot more fussy than usual.
We mentioned it to a friend, who gave us great advice: “It’s just a phase. Give it a week or two, and he’ll get through it.” Sure enough, a few days later, he did.
And ever since, I’ve started to notice the phases more clearly. Now that he’s two, the phases move a lot faster. One day, he’s taking baby steps up the stairs, and the next, he’s sprinting up them. One day, he’s just starting to learn his numbers, and the next, he’s counting to ten on his own. The progress, as a parent, is astonishing.
And it’s a reminder for me that whatever phases we’re going through in our life are just phases. Ben changes faster than most of us, but we can, too. We grow, we change. We’re all capable of continuing to change.
———
That’s a photo I took of Ben and I reading a book together the other day.