Someday

It was the evening Id looked forward to all week - Girls Night Out at a local Italian restaurant.

I'd taken time to curl my hair and was abandoning my signature diaper bag for the little black Prada purse C bought for me on the black market in China. I kissed C and tried to hand Evie over. She desolved into tears. Great big crocodile tears. Pleading eyes. Bottom lip out. Brokenhearted. The whole nine yards.

...and me. I caved. I just melted into a puddle too.

"Do you want me to take her with me?" I asked C.

"Do YOU want to take her?" he responded.

I nodded

I packed the formula. The bottle. The diapers. The wipes. The blanket and shouldered the whopping diaper bag along with the purse and hoisted Evie onto my hip and walked out the door.

I scolded myself as I drove to town with Evie chattering contentedly in the back seat. Im not a pushover mom. I dont want to raise a manipulator. I dont want to foster "princess syndrome". I dont want to create a monster. But sometimes, sometimes I cant discard what she's been through and treat her like a "normal" baby.

When Im stiff in the morning because she still wakes up with reflux and needs to be held through the night, I think of the weeks she lay in a hospital bed when all I could do was carress her head around the tape and wires that envelloped her little body.

Its a helpless feeling to hold your baby down for literally hundreds of blood draws and not be able to explain that its for their good. With as much as Ive done it, you'd think it would make me tougher. But it just strengthens a resolve to protect her from unnecessary tears.

When you've imagined life without your child, there is no moment that you want to experience without them. So every now in then, you give in.....even when you know you shouldn't.

I know sometimes it will be necessary for me to stick to resolves. We're working on discipline. I want a God-honoring, sweet-spirited, other's conscious daughter and know that will take work.

Someday she will have to grow up.

Someday she's going to have to learn the meaning of the word schedule and start sleeping through the night.

Someday we will insist that she get a job and teach her the value of a good work ethic.

Someday we'll help pack her up for college and launch her into adulthood.

Someday she will walk down the aisle on her daddy's arm wearing white.

But today....today she is my baby. My little miracle. She's exceeded doctors expectations and therefore deserves to be an exception to the rules.............from time to time.

Someday I will wine and dine with a suave little black purse on my arm.....but for today, that tattered old diaper bag feels just right on my shoulder.