Sploosh

I’ve been asked, with regard to the happy/greedy sighs that E makes while having a particularly good feed, “how do you keep your love from splooshing you away?”

I think I may have given this simple answer at the time, and it’s still true: I don’t.

I get splooshed away every single day.  My husband and I were warned, before becoming parents, that you don’t know how deeply you can love until you behold your child.  It’s true.

I am overwhelmed by love countlessly:

• in bed in the mornings when he turns his head and looks at me upside-down and smiles
• really, whenever he smiles – it feels like a gift every time
• when he gets all excited to feed, kicking and whimpering like he’s about to expire
• the moment his eyes drift beautifully closed
• when his gaze fastens on something and you just know his little brain is logging new information every second
• in the car or stroller when he falls asleep and his little hat is all askew but Sophie is still in the crook of his arm
• when he talks in his own language, usually producing ridiculous amounts of drool of which he is innocently, blissfully unaware
• when he laughs – it’s still an instinctive, un-pretty, honky, adorable laugh that squeezes my heart without fail
• those times when I need to change a diaper in the middle of the night, and he’s so sleepy and droops on my shoulder and covers his eyes… one time he even tried to pull his sleeper back closed when Daddy was undoing it to get to the diaper
• in bed between his parents, when he stretches and puts out his hands to touch both of us at once
• in the learning of new things, from rolling over to head-waggling to finding his soother by feel alone – and putting it back in his mouth
• when he cries and reminds me that I would do anything for him
• when I see him on someone else’s lap, so mellow and contented, graciously accepting of all the attention and affection lavished on him by people he’s barely met, and I feel fiercely happy that he’s mine, I get to keep him, and I’m the luckiest mom on Earth.

You get the idea.  This list could – and will – go on and on.