The Good Stuff

1. My older child saying "please". It's nice to know that he sometimes listens and that, occasionally, something sinks in.

2. My children walking. I've watched it all happen, from crawling to creeping along furniture to first steps. The miracle of mobility is that the child who once kicked inside me can go running around outside my body completely independent of me.

3. Eating. Once, all they ate was mama juice. Now they pick food up with their fingers and stick it in their mouths and then they chew it and swallow it. Their little digestive systems take it in and keep them alive and we (the parental types) taught them how to do it.

4. My older child talking in sentences. Every time he expresses himself he uses the pronoun "I" to represent himself--a complete being with his own beating heart, his own brain, his own thoughts, his own feelings. Yet he learned how to talk from us, and many of his phrases come from us. He us so much a part of us, and so much his own person at the same time.

5. "I love you". Usually, Liam says this after prefacing with "Mama? Mama? Mama?" until I'm so exasperated I finally yell in my most exasperated voice, "WHAT?" Then he says in his most cheerful, quiet little voice, completely unaffected by my outburst, "I love you" and makes me feel like Scummy Mummy.