Lenna, my Lenna. Where to start? This child is…my mini-me, except prettier and smarter and nicer. But boy, oh boy, did she get my stubbornness and my arrogance and my temper. But mostly, my stubbornness. And maybe just a little of my full-blown divaness tendency to like a little drama every so often.
My relationship with Lenna is the most complicated of all. I go from being mad to laughing my fool head off to crying like a baby with this kid — all within a ten minute conversation.
Mostly, though, I sit and wonder how on Earth two very ordinary people made a child who is so smart and so beautiful and so genuinely good. There are times I’ve found it amazing that I’ve done something good enough to even know this kid, much less been allowed to be her mother.
And right now, she’s somewhere between Tricia’s completely un-self-conscious adoration of Momm-ay and Matt’s disdain for anything that might indicate he has any affection at all for his old mom. So, while her moments of being in love with me aren’t as rare as Matt’s, they’re certainly not as frequent as I’d like them to be, and they grow less as she gets older.
I’m not okay with that, but I know it’s normal, and my goal as a mom is to raise these little rats to be happy, independent little rats. But that doesn’t stop me from welcoming Lenna into bed on a Saturday morning to snuggle with me, and it really doesn’t stop me from getting a little weepy when that snuggle lasts for ten seconds.
Little rat…beautiful, smart, funny, little rat.
Tags: Lenna · motherhood · parentingComments
