It’s just us in her nursery. She is playing with her Mickey Mouse figurines when I turn off the lights. Nap time. I plopped down in the gray chair where I’ve rocked her everyday for eighteen months now.
“Meri, you want Mommy to rock you?” I anticipate her throwing her arms up to be held, as she has done a hundred times before.
Instead I hear a simple “no”. She didn’t even look up at me when she said it.
Ummm, come again? These new little words of hers can pack a punch.
I just let her be, as I sit and watch my little girl play like a big girl. She held Daisy and Donald Duck’s beaks together saying “ummmm wa”, and tucked them in for their naps. Eventually she piddled over my way. Her hands reached upward and I reached down. She sat on my lap, grazing her teeny fingers over my hand while we rocked to the tune of twinkle, twinkle.
Lately I've been leaching on to my toddler, to the point that I'm probably smothering her to death. I cuddle her longer and squeeze her tighter than I ever have. My pretty little girl is growing so fast, too fast. For the moment, she is content to sit on her momma’s lap and snuggle. Just us. But I know those days are numbered.
Sometimes I think about what that time will be like, when our cuddling days have expired. In our short eighteen months, I’ve already seen a few stages come and go: the nursing, the crawling, the slobbering. I’m not going to lie, there are plenty of behaviors to which I can’t wait to say sayonara. I probably won’t know what to do with myself when the girl can change her own clothes and hold her pee until it catches a potty.
But the cuddles, I just don’t think I can part with them.
It seems dark, a life without Meri’s cuddles. When I’m having a crappy day, her cuddles and squeezes are the things I can depend on to bring me back to life. There is nothing better than putting your nose to the skin of the sweetest thing you’ve ever created. When I kiss her as she sleeps, my faith in all good and Godly things grows a little stronger.
How are moms supposed to deal with their babies turning into little people? It’s a beautiful gift to be able to watch your own children ascend into adulthood. But how do you say bye to your baby?
I think of my own mom and the times as a pre-teen I would practically petrify as she hugged me. I would spit off some smart comment to the tune of get your hands off me before I go lock myself in my room for a year. Where was that cuddly girl she rocked to sleep just a few years ago? She had to have thought it. That sweet little being she had brought into the world not so long ago can’t stand to feel her touch all of the sudden. Ouch, that stings.
(side note to my mother: I owe you a massive hug).
It's not a guarantee that Meredith’s adolescent years won’t be equally as cruel to me. I probably deserve it. One day she will refuse my hugs, and wipe away my kisses. And that time is fast approaching.
Thank goodness, it’s not today.
Today I’m going to enjoy the cuddles. Then I’m going to pray to God that time slows down. I know it won't be very long before she shrugs off my bear hugs as embarrassing. And instead of watching Happy Feet on my lap for the six hundredth time on a Friday night, she will want friends to sleep over.
In the meantime, I’ll be busy trying to get in enough cuddles to last me the rest of my life.
