Some days I feel like I sleep with a monkey on my back. Tiny arms tightly wrapped around the back of my neck, pulling my long hair and head back, while a well-placed small leg perches up on my hip bone. I scoot closer to the edge of the mattress. How that is even possible when I only have about five inches of space already, I will never know. When I no longer am able to sleep/function through her embrace, I sigh and peel her grasping hands from my neck and move her body off mine, pushing her closer to my husband, or the middle of our bed. We exchange words. My husband and I that is.
“I can’t do this every night,” he will exclaim in frustration, tossing his pillow and body around.
I usually snip back, “Well what am I supposed to do? She is always sleeping ON me.”
We say those words, yet in the backs of our minds we both know—soon she won’t always be this little.
When she looks up at me with tear soaked eyes and a red puffy face, arms outstretched and fingers wide open, calling me “Mama” and asking me to hold her in my arms.
She won’t always be this little.
On mornings when the warmth of my bed wraps us close only to be rudely interrupted by the smallest ray of the morning sun. She will proclaim, “It is morning,” and I will beg for five more minutes in my bed.
She won’t always be this little.
When my arms are full with my purse, lunch boxes, coats, and work folders, she seems to find the smallest of opening to reach through, find my hand, and then ask me to on top of it all to carry her blanket too so it won’t drag.
She won’t always be this little.
On evenings when my mind and body ache from the constant go-go-go of this life, but she tugs at my arm as I lie selfishly quiet on the couch, “Momma, play with me.”
She won’t always be this little.
From her bathtub parties that turn into my water-soaked bathroom floors to Play-Doh play dates that result in me feverishly cleaning newly-stained carpets; from interrupted periods of peaceful sleep because of a “Lay with me, I had a bad dream;” to suspended quiet online reading because of a “Can I sit in your lap?”
She won’t always be this little.
During the eighth round of hide-n-seek when dinner is boiling on the stove or after the fifteenth episode of Paw Patrol when all I really want is for her to fall asleep so I can watch the Real Housewives.
She won’t always be this little.
These small little occasions can feel like big, weighted-down long days. Parenting can leave us feeling like we have depleted every emotion in our body for the betterment of our children. Yet, in the middle of the mess and complaints I take a step back and breathe..
She won’t always be this little.
So, as she sleeps in my bed, all snuggled on top of me, and my husband and I bicker over why she is not in her own bed, yet still let her lay, I kiss her forehead about 87 times and I cup her tiny hands because I know . . .
She won’t always be this little.