Today I woke up (as I have woken up throughout most of the summer) feeling like I was being watched. I opened my eyes to find two bright peepers mere inches from my morning breath. "Hi," I whispered. "Hi, Mommy," Celeste whispered back, patting my face. Then India, who was sleeping on my arm, rolled over and sat up. As she usually does of a morning, she launched immediately into a detailed discussion of her dreams the night before, followed by a dissertation about how you have to read the tags on your stuffed animals because sometimes they come with a name already and sometimes you have to make up a name. (Seriously, the kid's mouth is binary. She has two conversational settings: Off and on. There's no "good morning," no gradual ramping up to full power, no gentle introduction to the topic at hand. She's either asleep, or she's talking in compound-complex sentences with transitions and conjunctions.) Then Celeste turned to Warren and started tickling him with her little hands, chanting, "Tickle, tickle! Tickle tickle!" Meanwhile, the cat watched suspiciously from her perch at the bottom of the bed, waiting for the inevitable swarm of attention that is her cue to scram. All of this transpired at 7:02 a.m. - on a Sunday.
"Warren," I said, "this is NOT the way Sunday mornings used to be."
"Well, it is NOW!" India crowed.
Most mornings that I don't have to get up early start this way. India and Celeste have long since figured out that if they want to come in our bed during the night, if they crawl in on my side I won't even notice them anymore. So I usually wake up stuck between a small body lying on my hair on one side and a larger body pinning my arm to the mattress on the other. While I wouldn't mind having my half of the bed to myself and not starting the day with pins and needles in my arm, I can't bring myself to get too concerned about our semi-sorta-co-sleeping arrangements. When the girls wake up in our bed, they're always happy to see us and in a good mood. I know that in just a few short hours, the girls and I will have had a zillion little arguments about - well, whatever. Brushing hair. Picking up. Eating some dinner instead of drinking five cups of milk and claiming you're full. My head's going to feel like it will explode into a million pieces if I have to wipe up spills or change wet undies or repeat myself one more freakin' time. We'll all be caught up in the endless, endless process of turning these little instinct- and impulse-driven creatures into civilized, empathetic, and polite human beings. In a couple of years they'll be too big to cuddle, and in a couple more years we'll have the drama and trauma of adolescence on our hands (which should be a doozy, folks - after all, I have a five-going-on-fifteen-year-old as it is; once the hormones kick in, we're all in trouble). Some day these girls won't want to crawl in next to us in the dark and quiet anymore. Even though I'm looking forward to seeing how they turn out, I'm glad they're who they are right now.
They do grow up very fast. I want to slow down the growth process, just a little. I love snuggle time.
Posted by: Misty | August 30, 2009 at 09:34 PM
Sniff. Dab.
Posted by: leolabeth | September 01, 2009 at 08:21 PM