I am truly amazed each day at how much I love being a parent, and especially how much I love my Ella. She is amazing. What I also find amazing is how much I love her. I never knew that I could feel so much love and devotion to a single person.
Some odd things about parenting: Parenting a toddler is exhausting. She is always on the move, always into everything, always doing something new. When I put her to bed, I am super excited to have some time to myself. But, not long after she goes down, I miss her. I want to go in and look at her sleeping. When I get into bed, I want to bring her into our bed to cuddle. How can you want to have a break from someone, and want to be with them all of the time?
I also am amazed about how utterly dependent children are on their parents. Ella depends on us for her every need. Not only that, but she trusts us implicitly. If I hand her something to eat, she puts it in her mouth without thinking that I might be giving her something bad, whether it would just taste bad, or be harmful to her. It makes me think of how easily people can (and unfortunately, sometimes do) take advantage of that and harm their children. Scary. It is a reminder to me of what a monumental task parenting is.
Let me end my post, dear reader, with a cute Ella story:
We often have Ella in the kitchen with us while we are cooking. One night last week, she was apparently very hungry (she continually made the baby sign for eat), so we turned the oven light on and showed her our casserole that was cooking in the oven. She promptly went across the room to the drawer where we keep the oven mits, got them out, put them on her hands and walked over to the oven to get the food out. What a genius!
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3 comments:
Wow-- Ella is one smart cookie. Just hope she doesn't open the car door when you are driving down the road. I saw that happen a few blocks from my apartment before Christmas.
It blows my mind how big a deal being a parent is. That's what I keep thinking: Wow, any person who's hit puberty and figured out the sex thing could conceivably (haha) have a baby, but that's a world away from being a parent. It's definitely the hardest--and the most rewarding--thing I've done (with pastoring coming in second, and by quite a bit I must say). I watched 'Spanglish' a while ago, which deals in part with a young girl whose mother has imparted to her a negative self-image, and I went into LittleOne's room and cried over her little sleeping body. I'm not even sure why; the monumental responsibility of teaching her about life and how to love herself and how fragile that is, so easy to mess it up--it just hit me all at once. And yet, she's this happy, healthy kid, and she surprises me every day with little genius moments. It teaches me a lot theologically, too, without getting too deep, let's just say that if God really is like a parent, there are a whole lot of us who have forgotten how to love and trust God the way kids love and trust their parents.
That's awesome! I'm so glad you two are loving parenting. I have to say, though I'm not yet used to being a parent, I can no longer imagine life without Ana! :) Ella is a cutie and a smartie, but, that makes sense! :)
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