Balance...
To say that I have been clingy lately would be an understatement. There is no rhyme or reason to it. Pax and I have been home for a good amount of time now, but I am smothering my boys in some serious love. Every time I leave the house I just want to turn right back around. Home is our haven. It's safe and for now it houses 3 healthy little boys and maybe in my mind going out into the world might change that. Maybe, as I know I have previously written, the dust has begun to settle. Only this time we aren't talking dust from one surgery or a heart catheterization. We are talking dust from nearly 3 solid years of living in fear and preparing for whatever impending procedure was next. We are talking approximately 10 heart caths, 3 open heart surgeries, 4 feeding tube surgeries, 2 emergency ambulance rides two hours North, numerous hospitalizations from UTI's or viruses caught, thousands (literally) of pokes and prods to my boy, hundreds of echos, ekg's and doctors visits. But mostly, nearly 3 years of living in limbo. Watching his color, freaking out if he gets a cold, stalking people to wash their hands, checking profusion, running him outside when he got to cold and started shunting, not sleeping for constant fear I would not find him alive in the morning, preparing to hand him over for another surgery. Watching him grow into this amazing little boy and worrying how long I would have him. I still worry, every day actually how long I will have him. I cry when I tuck him in at night, still. I stroke his hair as if it were my last time. I still savor every. last. drop of him because in all actuality he still has half of a heart. The surgeries did not fix him, they bought us time, they are palliative. I still worry constantly, but the dust is beginning to settle... I am allowing it to millimeter by millimeter. I still live in the mindset that if I let it all go, the bottom will fall out from under us. So I continue the battle of letting go and holding on. I always will I presume. I still battle leaving him. Battle being gone for to long. Not being there when he calls out for me. I never want him to not have me there when he needs me, if he has learned anything over his young life, it is that I am there.... through it all. So allowing him to learn to be a big boy is hard for me. We have begun to wean the paci and are starting to let/force him put himself to sleep on his own and it is pure torture. "Pwease Mommy, pwease!", he screams through the tears and off I go. I crawl into bed with him whispering "Mommy is here, Mommy is here!" I don't know who I am saying it for more, him or me, but nonetheless I say it. And when he does fall asleep, it is never long before I find him like this in the doorway to our room, to which he is immediately brought into our bed. Who can say no to that...
My heart, my whole heart, is so swollen with love over these boys. It is such a gift that I now understand how astoundingly fragile life is, but I am still learning to balance that gift, for it tends to make me cling. Hard.
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I let him live though. I let him play in the rain on his scooter, even though inside I worry he will get to cold or sick. I let him wrestle gently with his brothers even though I want to scoop him up and scold my husband for being referee. I let him play on playgrounds and run a bit without my begging him to slow down for fear he will fall on that fragile chest of his. He is a typical almost 3 year old, getting into trouble, being sassy, throwing food, testing the waters, screaming when he doesn't get his way, going to time out for spitting water everywhere~just for fun. He tests me and the fact that he is able to test me makes my heart soar, because that means he is doing well.
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| that's his I didn't do it face...note the water all over his shirt... |
Summer is rolling up on us quite quickly and I am loosening the reigns. Preparing myself to let these 3 amazing boys of mine grow up. I am already having panic attacks about Austin going to kindergarten. I want to keep him at his preschool forever where they treat him/us like family and watch out for my boys. I don't want to send him into the big bad world just yet. I lay in bed at night and remind myself to breathe because I don't know when my first born became an almost 6 year old.
Tis' life though isn't it... Finding a balance in it all. As a Mother, that is without a doubt, the hardest work in progress I have ever known. The letting go and holding on. I will be on my death bed still trying to figure that one out.
In the interim though I am beginning to enjoy our sense of normalcy. I am letting it filter in, brew for a bit and letting it go. We are making memories. Silly little memories that we will talk about years from now. Like Austin telling me he wanted to marry me like Daddy did or waking up in the wee hours surrounded by three little boys, all of whom snuck into my bed like preying panthers.
Mason asking me if tomorrow was our date night because one day of every weekend is date night with my boys in this house. Memories. The words, that make up our little novel. Ahh but it is SO big to me. One of those thick, can't put down, stay up way to late novels.
That cup..... it has runneth over....
Love and hugs~
j
Comments
Noticed in one of the pictures Austin was wearing a watch. My little love is wearing a watch all of the time. He likes being like Daddy & Mommy:)
LOVE the pic of him on the floor! He is so much like. But with Bodie, he says "Mama, nuggle, PEAS?" (He can't say his 's'es at the beginning of words yet, so that's Bodiespeak for Snuggle please? Melts my freakin heart. Isn't being a mom great?