Snuggles with Will

Snuggling during a movie

The last two months have been kind of rough on the mom front. Will has been clingy and more needy than usual, and I have been more uncomfortable and less patient than usual. Will was going through this awesome phase where he wouldn’t let anyone except for me help him with anything which was less than fantastic since I have a lot of willing helpers in my life who Will would not accept any help from. I’m sure his little self can sense the big changes on the horizon. We talk about baby brother all the time, and he loves to check on him at the Birth Center and feel him move. It’s just been kind of a struggle, and it’s definitely been a long couple of months, but the last two weeks, my sweet, helpful, happy toddler has reappeared!

Will is normally a very active kid. He naturally skips when he’s walking because he’s just a bouncy little person. He loves to give hugs and kisses on his own terms, but he’s not much of a snuggler anymore. He just has too many things to do. The last couple of weeks though, he has asked me on an almost daily basis for “Mama snuggles.” It melts my heart. It doesn’t usually last more than a minute or two, but it has melted my heart every time. He is such a sweetheart, and I love that he wants to connect with me physically. It’s really made me realize that I am going to miss these days of having my attention focused on one little person rather than divided.

I’ve been so busy being tired of being pregnant and excited to meet this next little man that I haven’t taken much time to grieve the changes that are inevitably coming into my world on the Will front. I know that so much joy awaits us, but it also breaks my heart a little bit, and I know that that’s okay. I want to enjoy and soak up this time with Will without wishing it away as much as I really am tired of being pregnant. I have an amazing toddler here already, and I want to love on him as much as possible for as long as he’ll let me.

Yesterday morning, Will woke up at 6 am which is not his norm. He usually goes down at 8 and wakes up between 8:30 and 10 the next morning, so when I went into his room, he was still groggy. He reached up and said, “Rock with Mama? Snuggle? Sing songs?” I started to cry as I tried to find a way for us to snuggle around my rather large belly and rocked him and sang songs with him for 20 minutes or so before he went back to sleep. It was a moment that I really got to cherish despite the fact that I was exhausted and my body is sore thanks to the whole nine-months-pregnant thing.

I don’t want to miss any opportunities for the precious one-on-one time I have left with Will. He’s such a sweet kid, and as excited as I am to see him with his baby brother, I’m going to miss our little love bubble with just the two of us. So if you need me over the next week or so (or until our baby decides to come), I’ll be snuggling my first born.