Baby Love

(Question:  New design--too busy?  It looked boring without the pattern on the side, but that could be because I had too many choices and was overstimulated.)

When people have babies in their lives, they talk a lot about how much they love them.  Or at least I do, and Toaster does, and Dave, and RockNoodle, and my mother, and just about everybody Willow's ever met.  We're bursting with it.  Our lives are changed by the love we feel for her.

But nobody really talks about what it's like having somebody who loves you like this.  It didn't really occur to me until recently, for the simple reason that it wasn't really evident until recently.  Oh, she clearly felt love--overwhelming, can't contain it love, but it just wasn't really directed toward me.  I'm the constant.  But when Dave comes home, or when one of the kids smiles at her, she is so delighted she squirms frantically with her inability to contain it all.  But me--I'm always there, and I'm always smiling at her.  This requires no reaction on her part.

But within the last couple of days, that's changed.  Not because I've gone anywhere--I sure haven't.  But she's figured out that I could.  I first noticed it a couple of nights ago, when I handed her to Dave and went to go to the bathroom, and she cried out in horror.  Not for any lack of love for Dave, obviously, but simply because I'd left the room.  And since then, unless she is sufficiently distracted, if I put her in her exersaucer or lie her down on the floor while I, again, go to the bathroom (because I really do have to sometimes.  Just can't get around that), she doesn't necessarily cry, but she stays right where I've put her, staring after me, until I come back.  And then she bounces around and grins with joy and relief.

It's craziness.  Nobody has ever loved me like this, has ever been entirely dependent on me for their happiness and security.  (And if they did I would consider it unhealthy.) Under these circumstances, though, it's just what is, and all that fear and wonder and sheer sense of responsibility I felt when I was pregnant have come rushing back.

I mean, eek.  I'm not always nice.  And worse than that, sometimes I have to do mean things to people I love and that love me because that's just the way it is--diapers have to get changed.  Clothes have to be worn.  And so on and so forth until rooms have to be cleaned and homework has to be done and dinner has to be eaten before any dessert can be had.

Wouldn't it be nice if you could just let them do whatever they wanted and they could just be happy all the time and thus so would you be and that wouldn't make you the worst parent in the world?