You are allowed to feel schpilkis (yiddish for utchuty, otherwise known as “ants in pants”) after letting your child stay on your nipple after he/she fell asleep after nursing two hours.

It is ok to remember feeling all jumpy and irritated-like when you walked back to the bed for one “last kiss”.

Even now when that kid is poised, ready and wanting to leap.  No matter how preened their feathers, how strongly rooted.  Regardless of your confidence in their ability to navigate their individuality throughout the masses in the world.

Now, when your heart aches with the missing of those chubby arms around your neck.  The silence longing to be broken with “Mooooooommmmmy”.

It is tempting to convince ourselves that the two are not mutually exclusive. How could we purely love our children and simultaneously want to give ourselves a shake like a big ole dog getting rid of all the water.

We are allowed to live in a moment and experience the reality of what is happening that moment.  Our exhausted child needed sleep, and if we felt irritation that it was taking so godsmackingdoobies long as it was… that’s just the deal.   How lovely to think that if we came upon a time machine and were zapped so we could re-live those moments, all’d be different.  This go round we’d fall asleep with our child, cuddling warmly.  Smack yourself with some reality and remind yourself that while distracted by your kid’s finger digging in your ear, likely your whole left side would have gone numb from hanging over the edge of the kid’s skinny bed (no room for you what with all stuffed animals procreating all over).

Romanticizing all of your intimate parenting is robbing yourself of the gritty actual of it all.

Cherish, as it was truly experienced.

Yours in arghabargazumzum,

Renée