I knew it was important when she called me instead of texting.

“Hey, sorry—I hope I didn’t wake you.”

I swung my legs out of bed and reached for my glasses on the nightstand. 

“No, of course not,” I said, stifling a yawn. “What’s going on; is everything okay?”

It was my friend, Mallory. We grew up around the corner from each other; our moms were best friends. Our friendship has the graceful arc of one where two people have known each other their whole lives—family trips to the beach as kids, sleepovers and playdates, bridesmaids in each other’s weddings, visits to the hospital when our children were born. I don’t see her terribly often in this season of life and I’m honestly not sure if we’ve ever grabbed dinner or a coffee together, just the two of us. But there’s something about a lifetime of overlapping memories that binds two people. If I ever need something—anything—she’s on the short list of people I call. And I’m on hers.

“Leverett’s complaining that his legs hurt and he can barely walk. Chase is out of town, and so is my mom—can you keep the other two while I take him to the emergency room? If you’re busy or have plans, I can figure something else out, but I just didn’t know who else to ask.”

I assure her that we’re free, and a half hour later she drops off her younger two children—Teagan, who’s 5, and Camden, who’s a little over 2.

“Thank you so much,” she says again as I usher her out the door.

“Don’t worry about it,” I reassure her, Camden on my hip. “It’ll be fun to have a little one again, and I’m sure the girls will have a blast together.”

The weather was reasonable for a fall day, so we put on jackets and headed outside for a bit. In the past couple of years, I’d gotten used to just turning my two children out to play on their own, but with Camden in tow, adult supervision seemed necessary.

“Want to swing, bud?” I asked as I moved toward the playset. And then I remembered we’d taken down the baby swing last spring to hang two regular ones.

“No worries, you can just sit in my lap,” I said, settling him in. Except he was only content for the span of 10 seconds before he pointed at the trampoline and said something in two-year-old gibberish that seemed an awful lot like “let’s go do that!”

So we did. And then we went down the slide and played ball and hunted for acorns and stopped him from eating acorns. The older kids had quickly organized a soccer game, but Camden required my full attention. At one point my husband wandered outside, right when I stopped Camden from eating the sidewalk chalk that Ellie had left out the day before.

“How’s it going?” he asked.

“Seems like everyone’s getting along,” I said, nodding to the game. “Although to be honest, I’m getting a little worn out. I forgot how much work a two year old is!”

I handed off Camden and left Jon in charge while I headed in to make lunch.

As I assembled lunch ingredients at the counter, my phone lit up. “Everything okay there? I think we’re finishing up here,” Mallory had texted.

“Yep, we’re good —sitting down to eat lunch now. See y’all in a bit.”

I realized we didn’t have a high chair or booster seat anymore. My first thought was that Camden could sit on a phone book, until I remembered I hadn’t seen one of those since the turn of the millennium. I slid a stack of cookbooks into a chair, and figured that would do fine.

The children all piled around the table; I set a plate of mac-n-cheese in front of Camden and started to walk away but paused. Did I need to feed him? Surely not, right? Two-year-olds could feed themselves … couldn’t they? I honestly couldn’t remember, so I asked Jon.

“Um, I think so?” he answered.  “I mean, I’m pretty sure … right?”

I started to Google “when do babies feed themselves” but decided I could just ask his big sister instead. 

“Hey Teagan, Camden can feed himself, right?”

“Uh, yeah,” she said, giving me a look that said she was questioning her mother’s wisdom in leaving her with these obviously incompetent adults. I took her word for it, my concerns mollified seconds later when Camden expertly stabbed a macaroni noodle with a fork he’d obviously been wielding with reasonable accuracy for at least six months.

“God, what else have we forgotten?” I asked Jon.

“Love, there’s no telling. You don’t know what you don’t know … you know?”

Mallory laughed as I relayed the story when she came to pick up the kids with a perfectly healthy Leverett in tow. 

“Yeah he’s been feeding himself since he was one, at least … maybe sooner? Third kids you know,” she said matter-of-factly as she simultaneously tied a shoe, helped put on a jacket, and located a sippy cup. 

“Right, right … I remember now. It’s just been a minute, yeah?” I said as I looked at my school-aged kids playing a video game on the couch.

“Oh for sure,” she said. “I think forgetting a few things is the only way we manage to do this more than once.”

That night in bed, I got to thinking about the harder parts of parenting little ones. Not just milestones like when they walked or their first word, but what phases made me want to pull my hair out at the time that I’d all but forgotten now?

I remembered my son’s refusal to poop in the toilet for a full year after he was otherwise fully potty trained. I could see myself, rushing his constipated, tantruming body through a Walgreens parking lot as fast as my 8 ½ months pregnant body would move to buy the package of pullups we needed since my tough love, “toss all the diapers and he’ll have to use the toilet” plan had epically backfired. We tried every bribe, trick, sticker chart, and candy reward to no avail; the dinner hour frequently served as a strategy session where Jon and I would brainstorm what we could do to convince him to go. Finally, four days before his sister was born, he figured it out, and it’s been years since bowel movements have been considered an acceptable dinnertime conversation.

Then there was the six week stint as a baby when Ellie wouldn’t let anyone else feed her but me. In her room. In the dark. With a lovey draped over her face and the chair rocking at just the right tempo. At the time, it felt like her mission was to break me. To remind me that no, actually, I knew zero things about raising children despite the still-alive three year old in the bedroom next to hers. In the moment, I could only chafe at the inefficiency of it and the trapped feeling of being held prisoner by the tiny, temperamental weight in my arms.

Now I don’t remember the last time I rocked a baby to sleep, and sometimes I find myself lingering in the bedtime routine so I can be there again for the moment when my child passes from awake to asleep. Although, to be fair, there are many more nights when the bedtime routine is a mad dash through the formalities so I can have my kids in bed and the quiet solitude I crave. 

I forgot how many nights I cried as I paced the floor with a sleepless baby in my arms. I forgot the panic I felt when we laid all five pounds of Nathan in the bassinet our first night home from the hospital and wondered how the hell we were supposed to just go to sleep and assume he’d keep breathing. I forgot potty training and sleep training and how perfect a projectile peas are for a nine-month-old. I forgot how terrifying an 18-month-old is with full mobility and no sense of self preservation.

Or maybe to say I forgot is inaccurate. If I try hard enough, I can access those memories. The fear and the frustration, the constant vigilance, the way my eyes burned with exhaustion for five straight years? It’s all still there.

But I remember something different.

I remember how much heavier a baby feels the moment they fall asleep. 

I remember that a toddler’s hand is always slightly sticky and surprisingly warm in my grasp.

I remember what it felt like to have all their trust and all their love, before they discovered a world bigger than just their mother.

Maybe I shouldn’t reassure you that you won’t remember any of this. Rather, you will remember exactly what you need to. 

And there’s always Google for the rest.