Peaceful easy feeling
posted in OmegaDotter |Saturday afternoon, I was sitting in the office fiddling around the Intertubes, and the dotter was in the family room watching a movie and snoozing, still recuperating from The Virus.
Suddenly she started moaning and whining. This means, in general, that she’s waking up. (The dotter, when woken up from a nap, or from a lousy night’s sleep, is just plain horrid. Whiny, miserable, doing her best to make everyone else miserable type horrid.) So I called to her, to let her know where I was, and told her if she wanted something, she needed to come in to tell me, rather than whining in the other room.
She dragged herself in, eyes heavy, hair askew, leaned on me, and asked to get in my lap.
I pulled, she pushed, and she fell into my lap.
She tossed, she turned, she wiggled her feet around, she dug her head into my chest…
And then she fell asleep again.
It’s been an age since she’s fallen asleep in my lap. I have a picture from when she was 2-1/2, both of us in the garden in Hippy Dippy Enclave in the Woods, and she’s sprawled across me, fast asleep, while I have a book in my hands. We were in the dappled sunlight beneath one of the pine trees; OmegaDad was fiddling in the yard, the dawg was at my feet–it was a pleasant Sunday afternoon.
But as I said, it’s been a long time. She wiggled some more, dug her head into my chest some more, and her breathing evened out and became heavy and slow.
I reached around her to carefully type usernames and passwords while I checked email or clicked on links. She’d shift a bit, then settle back down.
It was warm. It was cozy. It was peaceful and restful. I smelled her hair, I listened to her breathing, I snuggled her in my arms.
Of course, by the time forty-five minutes had passed, my back was aching and I really, really wanted to go to the bathroom.
But still, it was a quiet, restful period of time, rare these days when the dotter is zipping around, chattering at every chance, pushing new artwork into my hands, asking me tough questions (like, "Mom? What is ‘life’?" Um. Jeez, kiddo, can’t you ask something like "Why is the sky blue?"), or needing Mommy comfort when she and daddy bang heads accidentally (like just this past minute).
I love watching the dotter grow and mature…she’s learning new things all the time. But I miss those days of baby-holding. I really do.
