The End is Coming

Three weeks and three days.

That’s how long I have until I have to go back to work. Oh, how I’m dreading it. I’ve always said I don’t know how stay at home moms could do just that; stay at home. I do now. As long as there’s little ones in the picture, it’s so easy and fun to stay at home. If I could, I would. I would sign my little monkey and myself up for Gymboree and fun stuff like that so we could meet other moms and tots. I’d have more people to talk to than just my ten-month old. Monkey Man and I have been joined to the hip for almost eleven months now, twenty-one months if you count my pregnancy when he really was attached to me. Remember, pregnancy is forty weeks, that’s ten months, not nine. I can’t imagine not having him by my side nearly every minute of the day.

I am going to cry on my way to work my first day back. I’ll be calling home as often as possible just to hear his happy screams in the background. I’m going to be glancing at his picture whenever I think I have a moment to myself. I’ll be daydreaming of all the fun we normally have throughout the day together. I’ll be worrying Grandma is spoiling him too much and not taking the time to try to teach him stuff. I’ll be stressing out over the thought of Grandma not knowing the words to all the songs Monkey loves and him learning them wrong. It’s the itsy bitsy spider, not the inky dinky! And the sun dries up the rain, not the water! You row your boat gently down the stream, not up the creek! And you wonder what the twinkle star is, you don’t wish on it. That’s a completely different rhyme. Let him do the clapping in If You’re Happy And You Know It; let him do his jazz hands to The Itsy Bitsy Spider until he knows how to do the spider. He enjoys that. I want to be the one who enjoys it with him.

So here I am, during naptime, stressing over only having three weeks and three days left to enjoy every single minute of the day with my son. While my little monkey is awake, I’m cherishing every drop of our time together joined at the hip. Oh, how I wish I could stay with him until he’s ready for school. I love being the one to teach him things. I love being the first to see him do new stuff for the first time. I love just being with him. I never knew just how precious this time together would be before I had him. I never understood before. I do now, and a part of me wishes I didn’t. It wouldn’t be so painful to leave him if I didn’t know.

Until next time.