The Swingset and the Seasons of Motherhood...

For Vivie’s third birthday, Nate and I stayed up way too late in the backyard, piecing together a little swingset by flashlight. It wasn’t fancy—just something small that could fit into our city yard. But to us, it was magic. We could hardly wait for her to wake up that morning and discover it.

I’ll never forget her face when she ran outside and saw it for the first time. The kind of wide-eyed joy that only a three-year-old can carry. She climbed, swung, laughed, and squealed until the day faded into birthday cake and bedtime. It felt like we had given her the world, all contained in that little wooden frame.

And then, like so many things in motherhood, it quietly shifted.

At first, it was subtle—longer breaks between playing, choosing her dolls or her Legos instead of running out back. Then one day, she looked at me after I suggested we go swing and said: “It’s too little. I’m too big now.”

It hit me.

The swingset was no longer her world. It was a relic of a stage we had passed through, just like the play kitchen with its tiny plastic food, the beloved books now gathering dust, the clothes folded away in bins marked “baby,” even though there won’t be another baby to pass them down to. The passage of time doesn’t always announce itself with birthdays, holidays, or first days of school. Sometimes, it sneaks in through these small, quiet refusals. The “too littles” and the “I don’t want tos.”

That’s where the ache lingers.

And yet, it’s also the relief. Because those early days—when our bodies are tired, our patience stretched, and our homes crowded with toys and routines—don’t last forever either. Every stage, both the ones that make us ache and the ones that make us sigh with relief, eventually moves us on.

Motherhood—Parenthood, is a long series of little goodbyes. But it’s also an endless welcoming of the new—new interests, new independence, new ways of seeing the world through our children’s eyes. The swing gives way to the bike. The play kitchen gives way to the real one, where they want to stand on a stool and crack eggs beside us.

And one of the greatest gifts of owning and running Le Village is that even though these moments have passed in my own family, I get to have a little piece of them again through the families in our spaces. That swingset that became “too little” for Vivie now sits in our Irving Park backyard, adored by a whole new group of little ones. Watching other kids squeal with the same joy she once did—it feels like a glimpse back in time, and it’s such a gift.

I’ll always be grateful for that reminder, and for this community that allows me to hold onto these fleeting stages, even years after my own child has outgrown them.

To all our parents dusting away tears, packing up old clothes and toys, and letting go of little hands while watching them walk into great big buildings…Cheers. You are doing amazing.

❤️-Daniella —and PS, don’t you worry about the Cornues, we’ve always got big plans up our sleeves 😅🤣

A treehouse is coming to our house!