I often joke about how Emilia is our crazy baby. She's goofy and silly. Carefree and cuddly. She will climb up in my lap and ask for a "holdy", still wants to hold my hand and is constantly by my side. She's precious and all mine. However, there are days and times when it is so hard to remember all of these sweet qualities.
Days like Monday. She spills stuff. A. LOT. We know it, she knows it, anyone close to us knows it. I also like to leave my laptop sitting around. More often than I should. So, I'm upstairs trying to get some cleaning things done and I hear commotion from the little ones downstairs. Then quiet. In my mind, they've already worked out whatever problem that was taking place. WRONG. I go downstairs to find several dishtowels placed strategically around my laptop. Emilia says that there was a "little spill". I rush over lift up my precious baby (my Mac, not Emilia) and water pours out of it. Cue sickening feeling. I yelled. A. LOT. I saw tears well up in her little eyes (more pronounced thanks to her new glasses) and stopped momentarily. It kills me when my kids cry and more so when they're crying because I yelled or am in the process of yelling. :( I was able to power through the sad little tears and continue on my mission of expressing to her how angry I was. Not my most shining parental moment. Happily, my laptop is almost fixed. I say almost because oftentimes the screen just goes black and then it's a fun game of did my computer just die or do I need to just open and close the screen a few times. :)
Days like last night. When I was washing up the last of the dinner dishes. The kids were cuddled in our bed watching a movie before bedtime and I hear the commotion again. I go up to find Peyton frantically scraping popcorn off of my bed. Emilia had spilled popcorn, not once, but twice in my bed. It was everywhere. In the sheets, on the quilt, under pillows. Ugh. I quickly cleaned it up, changed sheets and saw that hundreds of tiny pieces of popcorn and kernels were sticking to my quilt (that had just been cleaned). I put on the furniture attachment and started to vacuum it all up. And there she was at my side in her jammies holding her blanket and she started smiling at me and said, "You're lucky to have me, huh?" "You had to do that anyway, huh?" It reminded me of her favorite lullaby song from Dumbo, "Baby Mine" the line that says "All those same people who scold you/What they'd give just for the right to hold you. "
There are days like those and then there are moments when I'm reminded just how lucky I am. I am so grateful to to be given the great privilege of raising her:
Be still my heart.
