This was going to be a really good blog post. I had a bunch of stories and ideas I was toying with sharing {including this news I just announced in my newsletter}. But none of those posts came to fruition. Instead, I was called to a higher purpose: rocking, singing, caressing, and whispering our three year old back to sleep. He’d been in bed for a couple hours when he started crying for me.
“Mommy. Mommy? Mommy!”
Amazing how that one word, said by that one little voice can pierce my heart and send me running. Tru was fine, but needed me to ease him back to dreamland. Overtired and out of sorts, it took a couple of hours for him to get there. I held him in the rocker, laid with him in his car bed – and it was heavenly.
See, I know these years are fleeting. I know that someday not so long from now I’ll yearn to feel him curled up against me, feel his tiny tummy rise and fall beneath my hand, to cover his chipmunk cheeks in kisses, to feel his tiny hand gripping mine as if to say “never leave me, mama.” I already miss those days with Ryder, who’s nine and flirting with self-sufficiency and a cuddle-free existence. We’re learning a new dance these days.
Raising and protecting these little loves of my life is harrowing work. My heart twists and turns and breaks and rejoices so many times in a day for them. I must admit, it’s so grueling sometimes that I fantasize about having an empty nest, with the freedom to go and do whatever, whenever. But at other times, I find myself worrying about how I’ll go on once they fly away and only call their mama now and then. The thought of it breeds panic in me, so I do my best to stay in the moment. Which is why I’m perfectly happy to curl up in the still of the night, a heartbeat away from my baby boy, relieved that for now, he still needs his mommy.
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I think it would be totally fun to jump past the 2,000 mark by Leap Day on the Choosing Beauty Facebook page. Have you “liked” it yet? If not, I’d love for you to join all the life lovers over there!
