EARLY Morning

It's early Thursday morning and no, I have no news to share. I'm blogging because I can't sleep. It seems the harder I try to fall back to sleep, the harder it is! The more awake I become, the more tense I become... my jaw begins to ache, my back starts hurting, and I find myself squeezing my eyes tightly closed. I know I should just get up, but I don't want to wake anyone else in the house, so I lie in bed quietly, trying so hard to go to sleep. Thankfully around 5:00 this morning, Cliff woke up from a dream, so I took the opportunity while he was awake to hop out of bed, grab my computer, and make my little nest here in the living room. I made some oatmeal, made the grocery list, grabbed a blanket, and cozied up here on the chair next to the fireplace in the corner of the living room. It's a little bit gratifying in some way to be the one who is up, to feel like I am "taking care of things" in some odd way, like I'm keeping watch while the rest of the house is sleeping. On the other hand, I know I will wish later that I could have slept more. I am not a natural early riser and I love a good nap! I typically sleep until 7:00 or even 7:30 if allowed, but these pregnancy hormones obviously have different plans for me! Just getting me used to the short nights ahead, I guess.

I've been blogging less and less lately and I think it's mostly due to the fact that when I feel I have time to blog, I am too tired to think about it. However, I know that part of it is this feeling I always have that my posts need to be profound... that I can't blog without sharing pictures, and that I have to have something really interesting or important to share. I'm so trying to get over that. I'm really trying to just write for me, but I continue to struggle with it.

I keep meaning to share some of the hilarious things that Gavin has been saying. I wish I had life on constant "record" and when something hilarious or sweet came out of his little mouth, I could just press "save" and it would save that little tidbit. I always try to remember these little moments, but they slip my mind and I don't always have a place to write them down.  Here are just a few I can think of right now...

Gavin brought a "my little pony" home from my parents' house last weekend. It was one that was mine when I was a little girl. He LOVES that pony and made her a bed next to his bed. He went into my bedroom closet and pulled out a small end table that I had stored in there and dragged it into his room. He got two washcloths from the bathroom - one for the pony's pillow and one for the pony's blanket - and he laid them out on the table and tucked the pony in. Last night when he was tucking in the "my little pony", he could only find one of the washcloths and was starting to panic. I suggested that maybe Grandma J had picked it up, thinking it ww.images.gas laundry. I told him I'd go get another one. He said "But she was wrong. It wasn't laundry." He was folding up the new washcloth for his pony's pillow, when I found the missing one on the floor under his bed. When I showed him that it was there under the bed, he said, "Well, you just never know with those Grandmas. Sometimes they're wrong, sometimes they're right. You just never know with Grandmas."

Totally cracked me up!

Now that he had three washcloths, he made two of them into pillows and used the third for a blanket. He decided to tuck in Linny  his Wonder Pet next to Medley the My Little Pony. He pointed to Linny, who is a hamster and said "This is Dad and this is you, Mom", pointing then to Medley. Then he asked me "Mom, how do you look when you sleep?" First I was puzzled by what he was trying to ask, but I quickly figured out that he was asking which way I face when I sleep. I told him that I usually go to sleep facing away from Cliff, but that sometimes I turn during the night so I'm facing him. He got a completely satisfied look on his face like he had just figured out some puzzle, and he said, turning Medley away from Linny, "Okay, I'll wake up in the night and turn you the other way".

...in the time I since I started typing this, Cliff got up and went to work around 6:30, and I can now hear Gavin awake in his room and it's only 7:00.

...It's now hours later. When Gavin came out of his room, he came over to me and climbed up in my lap to snuggle. He crawled under the blanket that was draped over me and stayed in my lap for over an hour. We watched the dark sky light up with the sunrise. We talked about his upcoming birthday and we talked about Christmas and snow. He rubbed my belly and talked about baby. He unzipped his jammies to show me his tummy and asked me to kiss his belly button. He tickled my belly and let me kiss the top of his head. I just savored the moments. It's not often he climbs up in my lap anymore and even less often that he stays there for more than a minute. As I inhaled the sleepy fragrance of this little boy of mine, and felt the softness of his cheeks on mine, I was reminded how quickly these years have gone by since he was a tiny baby in my arms, and I would smell his sweet milky breath and feel his silky soft skin. He's almost four, but he's still my baby boy.