Monday, August 23, 2010

Wanting it All

It’s hard to write poetry with pregnancy brain. A good, and pregnant, friend of mine found it defined at Pregnancy Fog Brain.. or was it Pregnancy Brain Fog? Either way, the idea is the same: My brain is on standby. It’s focused on getting my home ready and wanting to take a nap, both of which cannot happen at the same time – maybe that is a big part of the problem. I want both. J

Anyway, I could feel the poetry inside me trying to get out this morning as I thought about my baby girl – well, my big girl – and her behavior lately. She is clearly in the place between growing up, and wanting to be the grown-up big sister – and clinging to her childhood. She is only 6 and so she has plenty of it left. But her mind is racing with all that she is realizing about the world and what she is learning and you can see her soaking it all up like a sponge. Simultaneously, she sees that she is older and she sees the coddling small children get, and I think she misses it a bit.

This weekend, albeit after a busy week for her, she was up and down on the big girl/little girl scale. An attitude filled Saturday, turned into a nap – which she promptly denied taking, and then right back into the attitude (I wanted help cleaning the playroom), until her dad came home and asked her to be his helper, to which she enthusiastically responded as the obedient daughter. As the evening went on and she was behaving, she became more and more cuddly to me – trying to make up? – and we had some grown-up little conversations while she snuggled up to me in bed.

It’s a paradox, the poor kid. And I know exactly how she feels. I want my cake and I want to eat it too. But there is so much more to it than that. Responsibilities and accountability and unanswered questions and decisions to make. It’s hard. And it’s like she can sense it. But she is also drawn to the desire for understanding and pursuing her own ideas.

She’s grown up so much this past year.. even this summer. I know the baby coming drives that a bit. We all have changing roles. Sometimes we embrace them, sometimes we don’t. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to see if I can fit a nap into my very busy grown-up day.

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