You know that dizzying feeling when you start a new job and you are absorbing so much information as fast as you can and hoping you’ll have time later to sit down and sort through your brain? I feel like this is what we’re expecting of Zoe almost every day and because she has so many millions more neurons than I do firing at once, she’s able to handle it. At any given moment we are teaching her to read, write, brush her teeth, swim, have good manners, try new foods, have good social skills, how to be safe, and the answers to any of the hundreds of questions she asks each week. It’s no wonder she gets cranky sometimes. It’s a lot to take in.

For our part as parents, it’s a lot to teach. The other day at the pool I met a mom with four kids who home schools them. I am amazed at people who do this. I would not have the patience or the energy. I don’t know how they ever get a break. And I feel like it’s emotionally, mentally, and physically exhausting to teach my daughter just those aforementioned things–the basics for living life and growing up and being a good person in society. And feeding that intellectual curiosity. It’s all I can manage. Sometimes it’s frustrating when you tell her something you’ve told her a thousand times before and you think she should know it by now or it should be obvious. But if I allow myself to stand back and think about everything she is taking in at more or less the same time, it’s not surprising that some of those tips would fall through the cracks.

I like learning new things, but on a daily basis I usually encounter a lot of stuff I’m pretty comfortable and familiar with. I am impressed that Zoe can handle so many new things at once. So if she can manage to learn it all, I have to rise to the challenge of teaching it.