Thank you, Lilly

I feel so blessed right now.  My sweet little Lilly Lu.  Let me start by saying that I love nursing my babies.  It is wonderful in so many forms, but the thing I don't like is that my babies never let me just rock them to sleep.  If I am holding them when they are tired, they want food.  Tonight, for the 2nd time this week, Lilly has slowly drifted to sleep in my arms without nursing and I must say it is different.  I don't know why (maybe because it is so rare), it was such a sweet moment.  Sitting in the quiet glow of the Christmas tree, with Lilly stroking my face (she loves this), slowly closing her eyes.  This moment was priceless.  I felt time slow and I sucked every bit out of this moment that might never happen again.  Thank you, my oh so sweet Lilly Lu.  As if she isn't the sweetest thing ever when she is up and at 'em (and boy is she-standing by herself, crawling all over the place!), she is 20 times cuter when she is drifting off to dreamland.  Now I am extra jealous of Chris, who has always gotten to experience this with all of the girls and extra sad for him as he can't experience it with Lilly.  I cried right along side him after his stroke as he lamented his not being able to hold his daughters, but I feel it even more right now.  Feeling that extreme joy tonight reminded me just how much it must hurt him to not be able to rock her to sleep.  Lilly, you are such a blessing to us. 

 

Today, I might have started something bad.  We'll have to see how it plays out.  Elise is always either playing in Thomas land or pretending to be a doggy.  We can get her to do many things that she would not do otherwise if we start playing doggy with her, so today I used it to my advantage a few times.  To get her dressed, I talked about getting the baby doggy dressed in her pants and shirt.  To wash her face, I pretended like I was a mommy doggy, cleaning her baby. (No, I did NOT lick her face)  To get her OUT of the room with the sleeping Lilly (yes, Lilly actually slept today!), I got on my knees and called baby doggy to follow me.  Yes, all well and good.  Except that now Elise expects me to crawl on my hands and knees at times that I don't need any specific behavior to be her mommy doggy.  You see, the joy of having 6 kids is that this is normally something that the big sisters do with her.  They are sort of her play friends that are always at her disposal.    I have now been drawn into that category and, as much fun as it was, she expects me to jump in and join her no matter what task is at hand. (nursing, cooking, etc)  Once again, it was lots of fun, but once I start getting holes in the knees of all of my pants, will it still be fun?  Luckily, Lilly is quite the crawler, so we try to get her to follow Mommy Doggy, too.  If you come to our house and see my crawling through the house, you will know that baby doggy wanted me to come out and play.