Yesterday morning I was sneaking a few more minutes of sleep before getting up and engaging in the dreaded and torturous ritual I like to call "getting 7 children ready for church when you actually care about what they go to church looking like".
As I dozed, thinking about whether or not I had done a load of whites the night before and would I or would I not HAVE clean underwear for all, I heard my little boy fussing at the bottom of the stairs. He's close to 10 months, and is the cutest thing ever--next to my other kids, of course; and yours, should you be reading and also have children. :)
He kept fussing and babbling intermittently, and I kept intermittently saying, "Ok, honey--just a minute!" Until his babbles and whimpers sounded far closer than I knew they should for a child at the BOTTOM of the stairs. I jumped up from my bed to see my little man crawling to me with a very satisfied look on his face. My stomach lurched as I thought of his little never-even-tried-the-first-step-before body making it's wobbly, inexperienced way up to mommy and daddy's room. I said a silent thank you to those overworked guardian angels that hang out at our house, and held him close.
I went on with my morning, finding tights here and scriptures there, but I couldn't shake the feeling that a parent always gets when their child does something the parent didn't know they were capable of yet. That sinking reminder that we don't get to decide when they are ready to try something new. That out of control feeling. That "but the world is so big and my child is so small" feeling.
As we rushed out the door to make it to service, my 2 year old daughter was shoeless and frantic, trying to get my attention. "But Mommy!! I not ready!!"
Me neither, sweetie. Me neither.
3 comments:
I am going through that very thing right now. My eight month old baby is crawling and pulled up into a standing position the other day. He is growing up too fast for me. It is ironic that with my toddler I wanted everything to happen so fast and it didn't because of his stroke. Now with my youngest I am more than ready to sit back and savor everything and he won't sit still.
Ikes! Those little explorers can give you some heart-attack moments sometimes, can't they? Thank goodness that little children seem to have special protection.
thanks for stopping by, I'm going to love you blog, you read my mind!
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