I love being your mommy

I should tell you that I love being your mommy. I love being your mommy at 3 am when I'm holding you and comforting you back to sleep, and your tiny body is curled up on my chest and your sweet baby breathes are puffing on my neck, your hand kneading my t-shirt and your legs kicking out the last of your will to stay awake.
I love being your mommy when I notice something new about you, something that seems to please you, and I realize again that you are not just growing in to who you will someday be, you are now today at 4 months old your own unique person. You like to be in communication with your family anyone who will talk to you. The human voice crinkles up your face and scrunches up your body in joy like nothing else. I sometimes wish I felt that pure joy that you feel. Unlike anything else- it is unadulterated, it is untarnished, it is perfect delight that has not yet been challenged by disappointment or pain or fear.
I love being your mommy at bath time. You HATE bath time. You absolutely hate it. Its always surprised me, because it seems it would be a familiar and soothing environment for your tiny baby body, but this has never been so. You have loathed bath time form day one. You inhale and exhale quickly in hyperventilation mode and you wrap your white baby arms around your mama's forearm and you look at me like, "hey man, what the hell, this again??  I thought I made myself clear last time." So bath time is a brief affair occurring three times a week, for now. I scoop you up and lay your wet self directly on my dry-whatever-I'm-wearing, and then wrap your terrycloth baby towel around you until you calm down. It used to break my heart, but now I just chuckle a little at your overreaction. We used to think you'd be like daddy, who is not affected by much at all, and whose calm-cool-collected nature sometimes makes it hard to know if bothersome things are actually bothering him, but not so as of late. It seems you're a bit dramatic. And vocal. BOY are you ever vocal. And I love being your mommy, then, too.
I love being your mommy when I see that very serious, determined look come over your face again. You've been EAGERLY trying to sit up, practically since the day you turned three months. You have zero interest whatsoever in rolling over, but have nearly mastered holding your own bottle. (Which we have had to graduate into a honkin' 9 ounce bottle recently. You can really put it away.)
I was looking through your newborn pictures this morning and I know everyone says it flies by, they change so much, grow so fast...it's true. Your legs were these tiny fragile things, nowhere near as covered in rolls as they are now. I used to creep around not wanting to disturb you, and my stomach brimmed with anxiety about what might ail you. I still creep around, because we still share a room, in a different country now but basically the same arrangement. Someday we will have a home of our own, (or at least of our rent) and I will finally get to give you the nursery I've been dreaming of since I saw the second pink line.
I want so many things for you, it's hard not to be heart broken. I wanted a baby shower, a real baby shower, and a crib, a real crib, and yesterday I was at Barnes and Noble just to clear my head and regain some fragments of my sanity and I saw the wall of infant and baby toys and I nearly burst into tears.

I do know, I truly do know in my deepest heart that YOU are what makes having a child special. Our love for you is what will make your childhood special. I just want so many things for you, and each phase that passes, I ache a little inside at what you lacked because of our circumstances.

My anthem lately is, "It will not always be this way." In the meantime I dangle second hand rattles before you and watch your determination to grab a hold of them, and I listen to your daddy's consolations that you are more than fine, and we will be more than fine very soon.

And until then, I will just keep watching in awe that I get to be your mommy. Last night when you woke up in the darkness, something you rarely do anymore, I smelled your head and kissed your cheeks and my heart was overwhelmed anew at how lucky I am. I whispered that to you. I am so lucky to be your mommy. Sometimes the stresses of life and my postpartum emotional wreck of a self makes that reality a little foggy for me. But I remembered again last night. I do not and could never deserve to have you. I'm so lucky Eisley girl. I am so so lucky.