Enough.

The beginning of your very last week at kindy.

Then you’ll be big, off to school my little wildling, and for the first time in 11 and a half years of parenting, there will be an empty house.

Did I appreciate it? Did I soak up every moment? Was I enough? Will the thousands of photographs and videos be enough to truly help me remember how you laughed, your sweet voice when we sang, the delicious weight of your sleepy limbs like fat sausages in my hands.

Inevitability the answer will be no. I’ll regret not spending more time sitting with you on the floor; not blowing more bubbles; not letting you paint or have messy play with shaving cream and rice every time you asked for it.

I’ll regret rushing at bedtimes, patience worn to a nub, eroded by a hundred nutritious dinners left uneaten, a thousand refusals to get into the bath (and a thousand refusals to get out), a million squabbles with big brothers, an un-countable number of “muuuuummm-s”.

The truth is, I could never have revelled in it enough, appreciated it enough, loved you enough, despite every effort to ‘soak it all in because you’ll miss them one day when they’re gone’.

Because it could never possibly be enough. Who wouldn’t give anything, when their children are grown, for just one more moment; one more cuddle in the darkness, one more dribbley, drooly smile, one more bedtime story, one more nap-trapped afternoon as they doze in your arms, dreams fluttering across lashes and lips. No matter how much time you spend soaking it all in, it will pass you by and leave only photographs and memories.

And so, my reflection after all these years of small people at my hip or wrapped around my leg, is not to say ‘the days are long but the years are short’, though they undoubtedly are. It’s not to say you should love every moment of the noise and the mess and the chaos, not to shame or guilt other parents into ‘soaking it all in’.

My reflection is that I did my very best, always, or at least as often as I possibly could, and that is amazing.

Balancing the too-tired, weetbix-for-dinner-again, just-a-quick-story-tonight nights with the healthy lunchboxes, singing slippery fish on the nappy table, nutritious sensory-experience mealtimes with more food groups than you can poke a carrot stick at nights - I did all of it and I did my best. And that is all we can do.

So I’m sure there will be regrets, and there will certainly be tears watching my last baby ‘graduate’ kindy this week, but I’ll try not to beat myself up, because I have done an amazing job. And to the parents I see coming up behind me, you are doing an amazing job too.