A note before this post: Every year I plug the Jimmy Fund Telethon, a great local cause. Today, I am mentioning another cause that is soon going to personally affect me. Baystate Children’s Hospital is the place where my son will be having his surgery and the people I’ve met there are fantastic and make me a little less nervous about his surgery. No matter how routine a surgery, you know in the back of your mind that anything can happen. Check out this page: https://foundation.baystatehealth.org/netcommunity/sslpage.aspx?pid=533 for information on donating.

My little one drives me crazy. My oldest son is a master at this as well. Not all the time, but no mom can say honestly “I’m always 100% on the ball and sane”. We’re not, we do go a little crazy and we do spend an extra 5 minutes on the toilet wanting to cry but really just enjoying the peace. This doesn’t make us bad people, and this is definitely more common in stay at home moms than working moms. Though I remember some days staying in the shower an extra 5 minutes before work just because I could. We’re moms though, a resilient sort of person that is under appreciated and underestimated.

My baby might be popping his second set of teeth, which timing wise makes sense since he was supposed to pop his first set out around 6 months and he was 2 months ahead of that mark. It’s tiring, nothing turns a baby crankier than teething. My baby used to sleep through the night, now I’m lucky if he even sleeps. I say to him, “I’ll buy you a Corvette, a pony, whatever, just don’t cry”. I don’t know why I try to bribe me since a) he doesn’t know what a corvette or pony is and b) he doesn’t know what a bribe is. He eventually does stop crying, mostly to laugh at pulling my hair out for me. He’s not crying all the time, just when he gets on a “Mom, fix my teeth” fit, it lasts a while.

When he’s not crying, he’s learned that he can pull himself up and walk along furniture. He whizzes by and mastered falling on his butt, not his head. I told my husband, “eventually he’ll get tired of falling and learn” and unfortunately he has. Now he’s brave and let’s go like he can walk and lands right on his heavily padded bottom. His laugh is as infectious as his cry, and he smiles at you baring his 2 little bottom teeth that have almost finished growing completely in.

He’s growing too fast, and as he races out of the room or follows me around like my little duckling I realize that every cry is just precious. Life is too short to stress about not sleeping or all the fussy fits babies can have. It might not seem it at 4 a.m. on your third day of no sleep, but it’s a miracle and something we should be grateful for. Many people can’t have kids, many lose theirs too  young. I can’t get mad because when I open my eyes tiredly and I see him standing in the crib looking up over at me with a smile on his face, I smile back. Remember to always smile back, no matter how tired and stressed you are. You’ll feel better.