Sometimes, I wonder, when I am rocking you because you don’t feel well, or playing with your hair, or asking you where your foot is, I wonder if our paths will run along side each other long enough for you to remember me. I wonder if you and I will get the chance to make as many memories as I would like to make you with. I really don’t know, none of us do, and because of that, there are a few things that I want to tell you. I want to share my memories of you, with you, since so many of them were just between you and I.
I felt you move for the first time when I was about 10 weeks pregnant. Your dad didn’t believe me, but I knew it was you. You felt like little feathers, tickling me from the inside. That was the first time you stole my heart.
You got the hiccups almost every time I ate, and the wiggles when I had kiwi.
I practically lived in the bathtub in the evenings during my pregnancy. On one such evening, after having read somewhere that pregnant mommies should gently poke their stomach to interact with their babies, I was sitting in the water watching you wiggle. I took my index finger and ever so gently poked my swollen belly, as if to say hello. You immediately stopped wiggling, then, ever so gently, you poked back in the same spot, as if to say hello. That was the second time you stole my heart.
When you were born, I knew you were a boy before anyone told me. You didn’t cry, you just kind of talked to me.
The morning after you where born, I sat in bed holding you on my chest, listening to you and your daddy snore and the birds singing outside. I thanked God that day.
You didn’t sleep through the night until you were ten months old, I decorated your nursery in Where The Wild Things Are. There is a painting in your room that says, “I’ll eat you up I love you so.” It’s true, and I used to whisper it in your ear when you were a sleepy infant, and I held you long hours at a time because I knew that you wouldn’t keep. There is a mural painted on your wall, with words from the book, you love those words. I have held you up to them many times so that you can touch them, and you always smile.
You have my lips, and I got them from my dad.
You love books, and today I read you Bubble Trouble at least ten times. And you said bubble, and stole my heart, again.
You army crawled until you were ten months old, then you ‘speed crawled’ until you were fifteen months, when you finally decided to give walking a try.
You climb everything, and you are good at it.
You say lots of words; bye, paw paw, Elyjah, dog, bite, daddy, uh oh, yucky, night night, Maddi and now bubble.
I read an article today that had twenty signs to tell if your child is gifted, I marked off eight that applied to you, and your only 16 months old, but I’m probably a little biased.
There are so many more things that I could write, so many more times that I have watched you and you have taken off with another piece of my heart. The truth is, that even If I lived to be 100 and got to spend every day of that with you, watching you grow and learn, it wouldn’t be enough. That if our paths are meant to cross for a short time, or a lifetime, I couldn’t ever get enough of your cute giggle, or the way you crinkle your nose when I ask you where it is.
So I want you to know, in case fate does step in and part us, that tonight I held you. I snuggled you close to my heart. I rocked you to sleep, just as I have many times, and you drooled on my shoulder. I want you to know that I have watched you close, so I wouldn’t miss a single tick of the clock that is speeding along entirely too fast.
I want you to know, just in case I am not the one that you grow up calling Mom, that I love you. I have always loved you. And even if you can’t remember that I rocked you tonight, even if you can’t recall my voice reading you Bubble Trouble, it’s okay. You have my heart. You stole it from me, over and over again.
~Mom.
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