What Motherhood has given me.

Everyone,

I was just reading a post over at Arwen/Elizabeth about the things that motherhood have given her. She got me thinking about what motherhood has given me. So here is a list.

1. Tough feet and the ability to step on small sharp toys. When it first started to happen, I would hop up and down and moan a little because ouch! Those things hurt! Now, I just look down to see what I stepped on and move it out of the walk way. Hopefully it didn't break.

2. The ability to watch the same episodes of tv over and over and over without complaining. There are only 2 shows I let Butterfly watch on tv. And I have seen all of them at least 3 times. Is it sad when I am excited when the commercials say that there is going to be a new episode?

3. The ability to read books out loud to Butterfly in the dark. She wakes up at an awful hour of 6am. It's not light out yet. I barely have enough energy to help her climb into bed with us and peer at the book she has thrown on my head. I don't even put on my glasses. I just start and she turns the pages. It's only because I have so many of them memorized. Want to hear "Go, Dogs. Go!" or perhaps "The Alphabet Book"? Because I can recite them at a moments notice.

4. The ability to negotiate. Butterfly has her own opinions. She is very very loud about them. She has been since probably day 3. This is when she would go from content to squalling in .002 seconds. It was especially hard in the middle of the night when she slept right next to my ear. The one nice thing about this is that she is just as easily calmed down. She can go from squalling to content in about .2 seconds. You just have to know just what to say and when to say it.

5. The ability to function on very little sleep. I don't know why we got a early bird and a night owl. Last night Butterfly did not fall asleep until close to 10pm, and was up again at 6am. I can't sleep while she is reciting Nemo in her bedroom. Juice is so not a morning person. He rolls over and does his best to hide under his pillow when she gets up so early. He says it's just because I am so much better at fighting the breakfast battle. I know it's really because he's cranky when he doesn't sleep in in the morning.

6. The ability to listen about other peoples kids and actually be interested. That's because I want my turn to brag about Butterfly. And I want the people I brag to to be a little interested in my amazing child. So I force myself to be interested in their child. And you know what? I actually do get interested in the other children. It makes me a better friend to their mom, and hopefully they are a little interested in my wonderful toddler. When she was a baby I could not wait to skip over their kid stories to inject one of my own. But now, I listen, wait my turn, and ask questions for more clarifications.

I guess what this all boils down to is patience. Juice has this endless fountain of patience. I do not. But motherhood is teaching this to me one hard little step at a time. From trying to get pregnant with Butterfly for 3 years, celebrating her baby-ness (the good and the bad, I was so happy to just have a baby!) and now enjoying the blossoming Independence of a 2 year old. I'm digging my well of patience slowly. Patience isn't bad, right?

Safire