My Mom Genes

Posted by Fitzy

Like most just-about-to-be two year olds, my little Bean never stops moving.  Watching her is exhausting – she’s running down the hall, climbing on the ottoman, jumping in the den, and spinning to Ring Around the Rosie until she…we…all fall down.  She’s my very own Energizer bunny, and she keeps going and going and going until we manage to wrangle her into the crib at night.

Lately, though, she’s been a little afraid of bedtime.  When we put her in her crib, she says, “No bears!” repeatedly.  We tell her that the bears are far, far, away, and she doesn’t have any in her room, but her imagination is going wild.  We’ve ruled out more practical concerns about the crib being to small for her, and the temperature being wrong.  We know she’s comfortable…and we know she’s unhappy, at least for the first half hour of being in her bed.  She finally falls to sleep, only to awake at the ungodly 5:00 a.m. hour…demanding to sleep in Mommy’s bed.

We try very hard to not bring the Bean into our bed.  Very hard, I swear!  But when you’re already worried about your little girl being scared, and you walk into her room with bleary eyes and unfulfilled sleep needs and hear her say, “I want Mommy and have all my things for her bed!” as she holds her satin pillow, a stuffed turtle named Terry, and her ever-present Giraffey….well, I’m just not strong enough to leave her there.  So I gather her up with her menagerie and snuggle into bed with this girl who has transformed me in ways I never could have imagined.  I spend this time awake, thinking about how good she smells and how this is the most still she’ll be all day.  I wonder what kind of woman she’ll grow up to be, what with her love of using my Swiffer, doing my hair, and reading…and could almost cry with pride over how smart, feisty, and wonderful I think she is. 

This girl, the one who moves around like a crazy lady all day and sleeps peacefully in my arms in the wee hours of the morning, will never know how important she is to me.  No matter what I tell her, or do for her, or be for her, it would be impossible to articulate how she is the absolute joy of my life (and her dad’s).  She gave us a piece of our hearts that we never knew we were missing, and it’s here for good – this joy, this peace, the exuberance of her….it’s amazing.  The good news is that these new hearts she gave us will never leave us, no matter how many times we fall to the ground after another rendition of Rosie and her pocket full of posies.  It is what gives us the strength to get through the manaical days of working parents, and to get through yet another song when the Bean yells, “AGAIN!”