This whole thing can go by so fast. Because you have so much going on. Because you feel like you’re barely keeping your head above water. It’s understandable, but if you don’t slow down and wrap your head around this parenting thing, you can end up missing so much that matters. 

One way to do this is to look at the numbers. For instance: You’ll probably only get 18 summers at home with your kids. After they’re born, you get roughly 420 days before they’ll start talking, 400 days before they can walk. There will be only 13 first days of school and maybe 4 or 5 graduations. If they learn to drive at 16 and you let them drive themselves to school, that means you’ll only get to drive them to school approximately 2000 times.

Some of these numbers are big, some are surprisingly small. But they’ll zip on by if you’re not careful.

You can also track things in the other direction: If you take a mile walk in the morning and a mile walk in the evening as a family, that’s 600+ miles a year you’ll travel. Just 5 years of that is enough to have traversed the United States together. If you read three books a night before bed from birth to age ten, that’s almost 11,000 books! If you write a postcard to them each time you go out of town, think about how many they’ll have to remember when they’re older. If you visit two national parks a year as a family, by the time they’re in their 30s, you’ll have been to every one in America together. 

How you do this math is up to you. What you choose to track is up to you.

But you gotta do it. Because what you’re tracking is your family’s life. And you only get one of those.

P.S. This was originally sent on December 28, 2020. Sign up today for the Daily Dad’s email and get our popular 11 page eBook, “20 Things Great Dads Do Everyday.”