February 19th, 2010
Tiny
This morning I crept into Thomas’ room at about 8:15. I knew he was tired, but time was ticking and preschool waits for no one. He was still sound asleep which is unusual. Typically, he is the one creeping into my room, carrying a blankie (or two) and a dinosaur (or twelve) and shyly asking, “Can I snuggle?” (By the way, the answer is always yes, unless it is before 7:30 in the morning…)
Anyway, today he was the sleepy head and I was wide awake from my race with garbage truck. (I won! Yay me!!)
I perched on the edge of his bed and gently rubbed his back. “Sweetie, it’s time to wake up now… How are you feeling?” He instinctively screwed up his face and shoved one arm into the air over his head while arching his back and stretching his legs, and took my breath away. For that split second, he was my newborn son. When I was pregnant with him, we joked that I was his personal bo-flex machine. He would lodge his feet against my lower ribs and stretch. It was painful and funny at the same time, distorting my belly from round to angular and lopsided…
One of the first days home with him, I remember standing over him watching him go from sleeping to awake. He stretched. And I gasped. That pushing that I had felt from within so many times was perfectly recognizable. He was waking up… It is one of those little snapshot memories that I will carry with me always. Watching him do what I had felt him do so many times before… And now today, I was once again transported back in time. He was for an instant my tiny little 5 pound baby. Stretching against my ribs and stirring to face the day.
