I teared up while paying for groceries looking longingly at the lady behind me struggling with three children clamoring to her legs and climbing in and out of the grocery cart while she balanced a really chubby darling baby on her hip.
It has happened: I have become one of those sweet older ladies who leans over to young mothers and whispers "please drink the marrow out of your days with those children being so little...it will be over before you can blink."
I wonder if she would have really thought I was nuts if I had begged to hold that sweet baby. I should really get more daring.
I cried when Lucy's preschool teacher came to visit for parent/teacher conferences.
Yeah, I know parent/teacher conferences are generally held in the classroom, but Lucy's teacher is quite extraordinary.
She had changed Lucy's life.
Her strict structure and no-nonsense personality are exactly what Lucy has needed for the past two-and-a-half years.
And I told her so while begging her (jokingly...but kind of serious) to move up with Lucy to kindergarten next year with tears of gratitude pricking at the back of my eyelids.
She just laughed and told me Lucy could just stay in preschool forever. I'm sure Lu wouldn't mind.
And then I cried, like really cried when Dave and I passed the most darling baby in a high chair on the way out of a restaurant.
Don't worry, I waited until I got to the car but all I could do was blubber to Dave all the way home about how grateful I am that he gave me our babies. How grateful I am that he made me a mother. How grateful I am that he gave in and let me have Lucy. (More on that back here.) It makes me tear up again just thinking about it right now.
And then I cried when I told my kids during family testimony meeting on Sunday how I watch them sleep every night before I go to bed. And more often than not, Max is still awake reading his scriptures in the soft glow of the pool of light from his lamp.
I don't know what's wrong with me. Maybe it's all this Thanksgiving mumbo jumbo on my mind, but oh how very grateful I am to be a Mother.
Their mother.
She had changed Lucy's life.