My best friend and hitchhiking partner from years ago said that having children was "just another trip." I had hitchhiked with my friend through Europe at age 18, lived on my own since I was 19 and managed a university department of more than 30 people by the time my husband and I decided to have children. I felt confident that I was ready and able to embark upon the "parenting trip."

When we brought our red, squalling miracle of a daughter home, the initial euphoria waned and shock set in. A touch of postpartum depression could be blamed only partially. In a perpetual daze due to exhaustion, my days alternated between elation that I actually started and completed planting the iris bulbs, and exhaustion and depression because my daughter had cried all day, never slept longer than 25 minutes at a time, and consequently, I was still not showered and in my bathrobe. Before embarking upon this "trip," I could never have imagined the emotional landscape of peaks and valleys I would traverse.

Those days seemed to be made up of a succession of tiny moments, and the emotional heights I experienced with my daughter always seemed to be during the quietest ones. Reading my book, then staring at her perfectly formed face as she took her nap nestled in my arm. Smelling her sweet baby smell after her bath. Hearing her sigh of contentment as I rocked her to sleep at night. Feeling those tiny, miracle fingers wrapped around my finger as I nursed her. And of course, witnessing that first smile and hearing the cooing and babbling, and then the first true laugh as I made silly faces.

I expected the same emotional ups and downs when our son arrived nearly three years later. But since this was the second time around, I assured myself that the occasional exhausting and overly-demanding days would be just that: occasional. And knowing this would be our last child, I also reminded myself to take the time to savor those especially sweet moments. This proved easy to do since our son cried less often and was generally more content. He smiled readily at us and his sister's antics and loved to be tickled, especially on his neck and behind his ears. I spent even more nap times lying on my bed with him nestled in my arm, relishing that sweet newborn smell.

Today I look at my children, who are 12 and 15 years old, and they barely resemble how I remember them as newborns. In thinking back to those early days, I remember the softness of their skin, those tiny breaths and the silkiness of their downy heads during the quiet moments. The periods of emotional lows I experienced then seem to recede even further as time goes by. The memories of those initial days now have taken on a golden glow, particularly since they no longer coo and gurgle, don't want to be rocked or grab my fingers, rarely want to be held and cuddled, and they certainly don't smell as sweet. They are still demanding, but in different ways that now require discussing, negotiating and even sometimes arguing about what they want. The emotional territory I traverse is much different from when they were newborns, and I'm not any better prepared now than I was then.

What my hitchhiking buddy and I didn't realize when we thought of having children as "just another trip" is that it's a very long journey made up of many small trips. Just as there's the "newborn trip," there is also the "preschool trip" and the "elementary school years trip," all of which I look back upon nostalgically. Now that my son is in middle school, I have attended my last elementary school holiday music program, chauffeured on the last of the class field trips and cried as my youngest child received his elementary school culmination certificate.

These next years will bring the end of the child-rearing journey with that stretch called the "teenage trip." Raising teenagers, as most parents will readily tell you, is just as intense as those newborn months -- but in a very different way. Instead of struggling to let you know what their basic physical needs are, teenagers wage battles to gain physical and psychological independence. From this perspective, the "newborn trip" takes on an even more idealized glow.

Perhaps I can learn from those earliest days to savor the best moments as they are happening -- rejoice in my daughter's successes on the soccer field and on stage, and exult in my son's accomplishments in math, history and on the basketball court. Then, when I am being ignored as just "the driver," or taken for granted as the one who cooks, does the laundry and will run to school with the forgotten art project due that day, I can remind myself that I am doing these tasks to help my children to do what they aspire to accomplish.

The smile and glow of satisfaction on their faces as my daughter tells me she got an "outstanding" on her world cultures project and my son announces he made 17 points in his basketball game are the moments I need to enjoy and commit to my memory. Too often I hear parents say, "When I get my life back . . .," as if they have no life of their own as they are raising their children. My wise younger sister, whose children are young adults now, says that as parents you do have a life: Your life right now is taking care of your children and everything that goes along with that -- that's what you're supposed to be doing right now. Soon enough, life will be different. The journey of child rearing will be over and you'll embark upon yet "another trip," as child-free adults whose children, in all their various stages, will always be a part of you.