There’s something about a child’s love that washes away every bad thing that has ever happened to you. It’s so clean and so real it melts the most cynical hearts.
Baby and I play this game I like to call “I refuse to nap all day.” It’s a game we’ve invented for ourselves and the rules are simple: I try to get him to nap and he tries to stop me. Some days I win, but most days I don’t.
I’ve tried everything.
Rocking
Singing
Playing with him until he’s exhausted
Laying him down in the crib
Letting him nod off in his baby chair
Nothing seems to get him to sleep more than 20minutes at a time. The only way he seems to nap well is with me, wrapped up in my arms.
Hey, his game, his rules.
At first I was not happy about it. Why won’t he nap like a normal baby? This is a terrible habit. He’s going to get spoiled and that will make everything worse down the line. I have to nap everyday to get him to nap? How can I get anything else done if I’m napping like an infant? What if I don’t want to nap?
Then I wearily thought . . . well I guess napping isn’t the worst thing.
Then I looked at it from a different perspective. One that is easy to miss when you spend hours trying to get a baby to play ball. That he just wants to be near me all the time and that napping with me is his favorite way to nap.
Why do I get mad when my baby wants to smother me like this? And no matter how many times I get mad, his feelings about me don’t change.
Baby loves me no matter what – and that’s a true story.
He loves me when I don’t shower, when I’m too tired to play, when I’m sad and even when I’m overwhelmed by him. He still looks at me with this awe, like I’m the coolest person he’s ever met. I never knew love like that even existed. It made me realize that if I could be enough, always enough, from the one person who demands the most from me, then I am enough for everyone else and most certainly enough for myself.
But aren’t we all truly enough?