Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Why I Do Not Sleep Even Though I Desperately Need To

This is ridiculous.

I am on call tonight. It's late. I am sick. I have a low grade temp, annoying cough, and phelgm is various colors of camouflage. I have a headache. My eyelids are soooooo heavy. My brain is confused. I know, Super Sexy.

But I refuse to go to bed.

It's a disease I was born with. I remember getting in so much trouble as a kid because me parents would find me sleeping secretly in the hallway with my head just peeking into the living room. I just KNEW there was something exciting ABOUT TO HAPPEN! Wait, just wait, it'll come! Mom and Dad don't REALLY just sit on the couch reading the paper. So I am just going to laying on this uncomfortable hard floor and keep my eye open and be rewarded when SOMETHING happens! And then I would fall asleep.

Now that I am thirty-two years old, I KNOW that nothing exciting is going to happen while I am asleep. But yet, I resist going to bed. My eyelids could feel like they are magnetized and my body could be aching to just lay on a soft, soft mattress, but NO. I MUST STAY AWAKE LEST SOMETHING EXCITING! AND WONDERFUL! HAPPEN WITHOUT ME!

Funny that I should marry someone just like me. I hate that about him.

I am going to sleep.

Saturday, April 5, 2008

Precious Moments

When Meat Ball turned one year old, I was consumed with guilt. It seemed like I missed the first year of his life completely. Between working, trying to be a good wife, being a mother to a toddler, I realized that I lost the joy and privilege of savoring many of Meat Ball's milestones.

He is almost thirteen months now, and I have been playing catch up the past three weeks. He's an early sleeper, so usually he's so tired, I just throw him into bed and play with Ninja until it's her bedtime. Now I start the bedtime routine EARLY for the both of them so now I can spend a good 20-30 minutes cuddling and reading to Meat Ball before he's too sleepy.

And man, is he adorable!

My sister says that he looks like a precious moments kid. And he does. He has such sad emo eyes, a button nose, rosebud mouth. And three big rabbit teeth. And he is so sweet. I mean so sweet that your insides just melt and puddle around your toes and all you can do is drool and say, awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.... He will flirt with you, bat his lashes, he will hide in your shoulder, peek up shyly and offer the sweetest toothy smile and when you melt on the floor in response, he will duck his head down again to hide and peek up with just one big soulful eye to see if you saw that. And of course you saw that, but you are already a messy puddle on the floor and there is just no where to go. While you are holding him, he will grab your neck with his chubby hands and find the perfect, most comfortable fit for his big round head in the crook of your jaw and he will just hug you the sweetest, most heavenly hug for an amazing 10 seconds. He'll then look up at you, give you a wet kiss with a hearty "MMMMMMMMMM MAAAAAAHHHH" and hug your neck again.

Meat Ball loves water. If a substance is in liquid form, he's all over it. While take a bath, he like to dunk his face in the water. At first I thought he was losing his balance. But his butt is so big and stable, so I thought that was weird. I watched him very slowly and purposefully lean over, put his face in the water, and then come up sputtering and laughing his head off. He hears water running and he's there. I am pretty sure that he'll be a surfer like his father. And I'll squander away many years of my life worrying about him drowning or getting eaten by sharks. Now I am just reducing my lifespan by my panic attacks when I find him playing in the toilet. Especially since Ninja is a recent potty-trained graduate, but doesn't like the flushing part.

So I am going to be better about remembering Meat Ball. It is a well known fact that children grow up too soon. My wish is so do everything to slow down time. Not look forward to every naptime, bedtime so I can get stuff done. I am going to consciously treasure all the moments, good and bad, with my children. And try my best to record what I can. I can easily see me in twenty years angry at myself now for not making more of an effort to remember these precious moments.