A good friend from seminary said the following, sometime after her daughter was born but before mine was:

I never really knew how much my parents loved me until I had one of my own.

I remember hearing her say that and thinking, aw, that is so sweet. The love of a parent.

Then little she-who-is was born. And at some point, during a nursing marathon, or a bout of undiagnosable crying, or my 30th trip around the living room with a baby in my arms, or while peeling off my clothes because I'd been spit up on again, I realized, wait, it's not sweet. We love our kids so much because if we didn't, there are times we'd be tempted to put them up on ebay.

Actually, I'm not having one of those times at the moment. For one thing, the divine miss M and I had a pretty good day together. She also took her first bottle, from MaDear (after a couple of days of practice with R), while I was getting a pedicure. And, I'm thinking about Karen C and her niece (see comments from previous post) and my heart goes out to their family and all those who want children or who have lost them.

No, what brought that statement to mind was thinking about my own mom, who officially moved out of our house and into her new apartment yesterday, and how much we're all going to miss her day-to-day presence.

I never really knew how much my parents loved me until I had one of my own.

I never really knew how much my mother loved me until I saw her:
...reupholster two chairs in our family room
...sew three sets of curtains, several pillows and a blanket for M with her name embroidered on it
...give C countless breakfasts and baths
...go grocery shopping; unload and reload the dishwasher and washing machine, take out the trash, again and again
...put up with boarding her animals for several weeks just so she could be with us
...dutifully bring me glasses of water and Mother's Milk tea
..."other duties as assigned" which included helping with the girls, including doing things "our way" without complaint or criticism even though she may know better from successfully mothering 4 kids

...all of this took place while I was napping, sitting helplessly in a chair, nursing M or holding her just-so while she slept. Mainly I was just in awe that someone would do all this, just because. But, I'd do it for my girls too.

Thanks, Mamala.