Mothering and babies

So, I've been in the mom business for 29 months now, and sometimes it still sneaks up on me.

Willa and I were lying on the couch watching Mary Poppins. She snuggled in a little closer, turned to me, smiled and patted my forehead. "Ohmygosh," I thought to myself, "Jim and I invented this, our daughter."

I really, really like being a mom.

Even on the ride home from daycare when the soundtrack was about 18 minutes of a heartbroken cry from the backseat. She had smuggled one of her plastic lizards into school that morning, and lost him. I couldn't get her to calm down, so we just drove home. To drown out the ruckus, I concentrated on the road and some thinking. I know Willa was sad about the lizard being gone, but I think she still has some magical thinking about her parents. In her head she says, "I want the purple lizard" and I should be able to make it materialize. I think she's starting to realize that even her parents have some limitations. Kind of a bittersweet realization, I'd bet.

This morning I brought her (lizard free, and pockets checked) to school and talked with some of her friends. One of the little boys looked at my belly and said, "I used to be a baby." And then all of the friends informed me that they, too, had been a baby. I said, "can I tell you a secret?" They nodded. "I was a baby too. A long time ago." They looked confused. A mom could not possibly have been a baby. "And your mom used to be a baby. And Ms. Whitney (the teacher) was a baby too." There was nearly a riot as 4 kids protested loudly that their mom had never been a baby. "Actually," I said, "every single person you know used to be a baby." I think I heard their jaws dropping.

I walked out the door, laughing. I had just blown the minds of a bunch of 3 year olds.