Living in the Moment Which Will Pass

In parenting, I often find that I get myself all wrapped up in a problem--trouble sleeping, or behavior challenges, or a refusal to eat anything that isn't beige--only to find that, while I was busy researching solutions and consulting advice manuals and polling my friends, the problem went away. Actually, lots of life is like that for me. I have to constantly remind myself that "this too shall pass," that the challenge or worry that seems so present right now will eventually be a memory. It helps me to keep things in perspective, and really that's a key part of any spiritual life: knowing that the problem of today is not the sum of our existence. But I've been thinking recently about how to reconcile that with another key aspect of a spiritual life: living in the moment. Are they contradictory? Can we be fully present in the moment and, at the same time, hold in our awareness that the moment will pass? I often think life is about tensions and balance, about noticing the reality that almost everything is held in tension, in some kind of gray space between the black and white that we like to pretend make up the world. And this is no different, I guess. All we have is our current awareness, and that awareness will change in an instant. Somehow it's related for me to a breathing exercise I learned recently, that's intended for people experiencing pain. Breathing in, you say "I feel my pain." Breathing out, you say "I am not my pain." It's an acknowledgement of the very real experience of the present moment, not trying to pretend it away or ignore it...and then an acknowledgement that the present moment is not the totality of existence. I wonder how that breathing exercise would work with other things. "I experience my child's aversion to vegetables. My child is not her aversion to vegetables." What has worked for you, to be present and to acknowledge the very transitory nature of life?