One night about a week ago I heard Thomas crying in his bed. I quietly walked into the room and knelt by his bed, giving him kisses all over his face while making sure the bed wasn’t wet. As he whimpered – with his eyes closed – one of my first thoughts was to give him his “cumi” (binky) to help soothe his concerns. I knew I couldn’t because he had already gone 5 or 6 days without it and he wasn’t asking for it. It was just me thinking how much I wanted to make him feel better and calm him down.
Of course, within a few short minutes he rolled over and fell back asleep. Then I realized that I forgot to say good bye: to the little boy whose face would light up while reaching for his cumi; to the boy who dragged his stool around to see where I had hidden it; to the little sucking sounds he would make at night just before falling asleep and letting the cumi fall out of his mouth. Baby Tomcsi has moved on.
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And he loves to remind me: “I a big boy now, Mommy.” He says this all the time when I put a diaper on him at night. He is fully trained during the day now and hates getting a diaper for bed time. Unfortunately, I have to clean sheets every day – his, Isabel’s, ours, depending on where he ends up each night. Though, considering he manages to wet our beds even with a diaper on, we may as well take the plunge and see if it helps him with this next step.
In any case, we are (okay, I am) suffering from a baby vacuum. It’s a little strange to use the changing table as another table-top. (Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing I miss about changing poopy diapers! But it has hit me that for the first time in many, many months it no longer serves its purpose.) It’s strange that our youngest has full-on conversations with us, his sister, or himself. It’s a little strange that my baby boy sings “Old MacDonald had a farm, a-e-i-o-u” with Isabel and me during our reading lessons. And Isabel has dragged him into pretend-play, skipping parallel-play and designating it for oldest babies only.
Sigh. It is all a wonder, all beautiful, all heart-wrenching. Well, I guess I will have to get all my tooshie-squeezes, face kisses, and bear hugs in now while I can. No matter what, though, he will always be my Little Man.
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Aren’t you glad, no more cumi?? About time!!! :)) .. now, to get him potty trained before the next one!!
His speaking/singing will explode now, I think, w/o the cumi!
he is following Isabel’s footsteps with the verbal diarrhea. 🙂 I love it, though.
And he’s mostly potty-trained, just not at night. He likes to think he is, so hopefully soon!