Last week you got your first cold, and it broke my heart. You were a champ about it, except when it was time to sleep. The other night you wouldn't sleep longer than an hour at a stretch. Your dad and I didn't know how we were going to survive the night. At one point I sat in the chair in your room with you sleeping on my chest. It seemed to be the only way you were willing to sleep. I thought about how much I wanted to be in my own bed at that moment, face down with the covers pulled over my head. Then I had to remind myself that one day I might look back on this moment fondly. One day you might be a surly teenager with a broken heart and I won't be able to make it all better simply by vowing to sit up with you all night listening to you sniffle into my shirt. Or you might move far away and I will long to just hold you in my arms and watch the clock tick from 11:30 to 12:00 to 12:30.
Then I started to cry, not because of those far off ideas, but because, Mia, I would do ANYTHING for you. We are just scraping the surface of discomforts I would face for you, and that is a heavy heavy thing.
You are changing every day. Your grandma tells me "tell Mia to slow down!" but I don't even want you to. I love watching you learn and evolve. I want more, more, more. The last few days you have figured out how to drink from a sippy cup and how to turn the pages of your board books. You are working on pulling up to standing on things, but haven't quite figured out how to get your legs under you yet. Regardless, all you want to do it stand right now. You stand at the coffee table to slap your tiny hands on the surface. You stand at the little Fisher Price table I bought you and navigate yourself around it.
You also eat everything we put in front of you. You especially love peaches. I put a few cut up pieces in a mesh feeder that you munch and suck on. You moan in delight while you're eating it, and it keeps you occupied while your dad and I eat dinner. When it's almost gone you bang it on the highchair tray and look at it from every angle as if you're trying to figure out how to get the last drops from it.
We are still working on your sleeping. More often than not you'll sleep 10-11 hours straight a night, but some nights you wake up and just can't get back to sleep. Even if I try to rock you, you might lay awake for a few hours. Those nights are really rough on me. I'm sorry to say that I just do not deal well with being awake in the middle of the night. Something happens to me when it gets dark outside, and I seem to lose all ability to cope or problem solve. I'm working on it, because I know insomnia, and I always wanted my mom when I couldn't sleep.
We're also still working on you getting used to "strangers." I put that in quotes because we obviously don't just hand you off to strangers, but you think anyone other than your dad and me are strangers. Grandma and Grandpa came a few weekends ago and it took you almost a full 24 hours before you would even sit next to Grandpa on the couch without crying.
You love to grab people's faces and hair. Sometimes you put your little face nose-to-nose with me and just smile and it kills me dead. Then you open your mouth wide and put it to my cheek in what I imagine is your idea of a kiss, and I die all over again. That moment, even if all of the other moments in the whole day suck fantastically, that moment makes it all worth it.
Halloween is coming up, and following that we get to experience our first holidays with you. I just can't wait. Watching you interact with the world is probably the most amazing thing I've ever experienced, and as I said before, it just keeps getting better and better.
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