I have wished for a family since I could remember. I was always playing house, even if nobody would play with me,I would pretend. As I got older the need got stronger. I was smart enough not to get pregnant in high school. I was to busy getting in trouble at home or in class. I was a wild fire is what I am told. In the back of my mind a family was still there. After high school I tried looking for a suitable person to settle down with. Came close a couple times but something would always come up and I would see that we were not a match. No big deal, I moved on.
Then came my dream guy. Well more like the guy I dreamed about. I wanted to be with this guy for as long as I can remember. We were married six months after we got together. Two months after getting married I found out I was pregnant.
Finally. Finally I was getting what I wanted. A family of my own. It didn’t bother me that he had two children already. I just wanted one of my own. It is like a yours,mine and ours thing (mine was a cat). It has been a ride ever since.
I look at my son everyday and just marvel at how much he has grown. It amazes me that I produced him. That me, someone who thought they couldn’t do anything right gave birth. Me, someone who feels the need to please those closest to me was able to have a child. A little boy none the less. It makes me cry for joy knowing that I was given this blessing. A very healthy blessing at that. It is the little things that make me aware of all this. Of getting what I have always wanted, and it being damn near perfect.
Today it was during play time. Monster wanted my attention really badly. Like he was climbing all over me, playing with things that he knew he was not allowed to play with. So I put everything down. Phone, laptop, snack, TV remote… all of it. Picked him up and carried him to his toy box. Where we continued to play with his toys (where I realized he does not have a lot of toys for his age range). I picked up a foam book to read to him. Apparently he wanted to look at it cause he took it from me. Well he was looking through it, trying to turn the pages. He opened it to a page (which happen to have a bulldozer on it), and asked me “what is this”. Now my little man doesn’t speak very many words,and defiantly not sentences. So this took me by surprise. I didn’t freak out or get super excited. I sat silently in the hallway with him, trying not to cry with overwhelming joy, and reveled in the fact that my son not only said a whole sentence (plain as day) but also asked me a question.
He is my little gift. My blessing. My answered prayer. My miracle. He never ceases to amaze me and I pray that never ends. The road is going to be long. There are going to be phases that will feel like they will never end and endless nights that will be just a phase. But for right now, I am going to soak in every moment I can. Document as much as I can so it can live on, and so I can go back and read it all when things get tough, like when we hit the terrible twos (it will help me remember that he was once cute). Until then though, I am going to enjoy every moment, every word, every nap and every snuggle. Because they won’t last forever.
The Optimistic Mom 