What we do

Tonight, sitting in the dark with Tahlia, I realized how much we do.

What we do as parents is amazing. We don't even think about it. We don't think about anything; we don't think about a return; we don't expect anything in return; we just do.

Lately Asher has been having trouble sleeping. We stand beside his bed helping him sleep. We stand there on wobbly legs, attempting to have him sleep a little longer. We stand there trying to make him well and strong. We stand there through sleepless nights.

And there I was sitting in the dark with Tahlia. We had already done books -- she picked the fairy book and the one about the pig who loves herself as she is. I'd told her her first story -- a made up one about her playing in the rain, which actually wasn't the rain but was Daddy soaking her with the garden hose; somehow, as with all of her stories lately, a fairy, specifically a water fairy comes in and plays with her too. We had just turned on the music and Blackbird was playing. I asked her if we should try pee-pee on the potty or just jump into bed, and she said she needed to go pee-pee. If you don't remember from an earlier post, we don't have Tahlia sleep in the bathroom. We are actually in her room using a little blue Bjorn potty that we have her use at night, and which we clean out after each use.

And there we sat. She was wrong. It wasn't pee-pee at all. It was poopy. It was smelly poopy. She had mustard chicken last night,and for some reason, it really made her poopy smell bad. Bad. She likes to hug when she poops. She likes to tell me that she loves me when she poops. She grabs my neck and pulls me in closely and says , "I dove you Daddy." She pulls me in closely and holds me tightly. I love to cuddle with her, but this is one time when I'd like to have a little more space, but she holds me, and I don't pull away.

She is also going through a particularly clingy time. Just last week, she was crying horribly every night as we put her to bed because she didn't want us to leave her. One of the ways that she has figured out how to keep us in the room is by saying that she needs to go to the bathroom. This isn't exactly one of those times as she actually went poopy. But it is, in a way, because the only reason she is staying on the potty is to keep me in the room a little longer.

And, it smells.

But this is one of those times. This is one of those times like when your child is all wet, and you pick her up even though your entire shirt becomes wet. This is one of those times like when she is sitting at the table and wants to give you a hug even though you have to go to work, and her hands are covered in maple syrup that soon will be on your shoulders. This is one of those times like when you hold that piece of fruit bar in your hand for at least fifteen minutes because there is the possibility that she is going to want to finish it. This is one of those times when you just do what you need to do because you love your child.

It is amazing what we do. And it is with the expectation of nothing in return. So I continue to hold and hug her as she sits on the potty.