{"id":2447289,"date":"2019-08-07T22:32:00","date_gmt":"2019-08-08T04:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/news\/the-aspen-princess-i-get-it-he-doesnt-need-me-as-much-as-i-think-he-does\/"},"modified":"2019-08-07T22:32:00","modified_gmt":"2019-08-08T04:32:00","slug":"the-aspen-princess-i-get-it-he-doesnt-need-me-as-much-as-i-think-he-does","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/the-aspen-princess-i-get-it-he-doesnt-need-me-as-much-as-i-think-he-does\/","title":{"rendered":"The Aspen Princess: I get it \u2014 He doesn\u2019t need me as much as I think he does"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cI promise I won\u2019t cry when you leave, Mommy,\u201d Levi said in one of those moments that, as a mother, squeezes your heart so tight you can\u2019t breathe for a second or two.<\/p>\n

The time had come for the milestone many mothers dread and also covet: the first time you leave your child for more than a few hours.<\/p>\n

When I got married in 2011, I had no children and could not understand why anyone would want to take their kids to my wedding. After all, this was an excuse for them to leave their little rugrats at home and actually have fun for once.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut our daughter is an extension of us,\u201d said one friend whose daughter was about 1 year old at the time. \u201cWe don\u2019t want to be without her.\u201d<\/p>\n

She wasn\u2019t the only one. I\u2019d convinced my girlfriends from California not only to come without their children, but without their husbands. Someone told me that when you have a wedding in Aspen, everyone comes. Well, they couldn\u2019t have been more wrong. To this day, I regret those invitations I didn\u2019t extend to people I love, not only to the doting husbands of my wonderful surfer girls, but to other friends with whom my relationships suffered since then. (Except for my friend Shad from college. He was a real player back in the day and somehow managed to sleep with several of my closest friends. We all agreed it would be a little awkward for everyone).<\/p>\n

It was one of the many things I\u2019d apologize for after I\u2019d finally had a child of my own. Shad in particular was super offended that I hadn\u2019t invited him to my wedding.<\/p>\n

But now that I have a child of my own, I get it. It\u2019s true my girlfriends were a little bit traumatized, what, having left their kids for the very first time to attend my wedding, though I do think they probably shouldn\u2019t have waited for so long.<\/p>\n

Newsflash: Your kid doesn\u2019t need you as much as you think. In fact, they can indeed live without you. It is you who may not be able to live without them.<\/p>\n

Naturally, I worried that when I left him for the first time to travel to Minneapolis, Levi might act out at school, or get a little weepy, or crumple into hysterics when he realized he wanted me and for the first time in his life, I wasn\u2019t there.<\/p>\n

He didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Granted, he\u2019s in excellent care. Ryan\u2019s dad is one of these men from the old school generation who were taught not to show their emotions, who won\u2019t ever admit when they\u2019re in pain, and they run their households like a team coach. But underneath that crusty exterior is a soft, warm center, like a chocolate croissant after it\u2019s heated. Whatever guard he tried to put up with his own children (not that he was fooling anyone) he dropped with reckless abandon for his grandkids.<\/p>\n

When his granddaughter was a baby, he drove 45 minutes each way to take care of her five days a week. As she grew older, he\u2019d play with her in her little toy kitchen; or they\u2019d camp in a tent in the middle of the living room; or he\u2019d create a game out of a box, a ball, or whatever was available. He always says that kids prefer the box the toy came in.<\/p>\n

For Levi\u2019s second birthday, Ron sat with me at the dining room table and helped me make a train out of cardboard and baking tins, coloring in the tracks with a black Sharpie pen. Keep in mind this is a far cry from my own father, who, despite being the sweetest, and funniest person on the planet, is completely useless when it comes to domestic matters. The only thing he knows how to cook is an egg in the microwave. He throws it into a mug and scrambles it with a little shredded cheese and then eats it right out of the cup with a fork. It\u2019s a pretty pathetic sight, if I\u2019m being honest.<\/p>\n

Ron, on the other hand, is also pretty decent in the kitchen. This is another Margo trait that I\u2019m happy to have married into \u2014 the men in this family love to cook while the women sit leisurely around the table and gab. Don\u2019t get me wrong, I do the cooking in our house. But on the rare occasion I can\u2019t manage it, Ryan can step up to the plate like nobody\u2019s business. He recently made a taco spread that was so delicious it almost felt like he\u2019d been holding out on me.<\/p>\n

I should not be surprised, then, when there are no phone calls or texts rolling in from the homestead. I was the one who finally called them when I couldn\u2019t take it anymore, even though I still worried Levi might get upset when he heard my voice and realized it had been more than \u201ctwo sleeps\u201d since he saw me last.<\/p>\n

Nope.<\/p>\n

Instead, the little voice I heard on the other end of the phone sounded surprisingly, reassuringly at ease. He reported that he missed me and loved me, but clearly, he was doing just fine. Hearing him fussing in the background before bath time, I also realized how nice it was to have a little break from the day-to-day demands of caring for a young child.<\/p>\n

I had a full day in Minneapolis before we set off on our road trip to do what I wanted. I had a mani-pedi. I shopped. I went for a run at seven o\u2019clock at night and then enjoyed a late dinner where I could actually have a conversation. I went out to a couple of nice restaurants and drank fancy cocktails and expensive food. I lingered.<\/p>\n

It was short and sweet, and it was the first time I got to experience it for myself: the kid is all right.<\/p>\n

The Princess secretly loves shopping in teeny bopper stores. Email your love to alisonmargo@gmail.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI promise I won\u2019t cry when you leave, Mommy,\u201d Levi said in one of those moments that, as a mother, squeezes your heart so tight you can\u2019t breathe for a second or two. The time had come for the milestone many mothers dread and also covet: the first time you leave your child for more […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2447289","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-24 15:58:05","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2447289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2447289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2447289\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2447289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2447289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2447289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}