a room to call her own

I keep catching myself walking past the open door to her room and stopping.

Smiling.

It's nothing extraordinary.  Pretty simple.

Maybe it's just that I never got a room ready for her before this, since she's been in with us since birth (and still is, really), and I'm enjoying it more than I thought I would.  Creating a little space just for her, that is.

She's really quite into it as well, of course.  Especially that canopied and cushiony reading corner.  She likes to hide behind the "curtain" and play peek-a-boo.  Or she'll take her baby in there and call to me "Mama come see! Mama come see! Mommmmmmy come see!" (she knows that gets me attention, I think)  and so in I go...... and she tells me "I read baby blue".  And there she is "reading" to baby blue.

She's got quite a sense of order, too, and I think she enjoys having most of her things in one room and having a place for each thing.  My mom tells me she comes by it honestly.  And then tells me about much needed sticker charts and night time rituals and all kinds of little particulars I had when I was a little one.

I like to think I turned out okay.  Looking in certain areas of my house now you'd never know I was so into order and such as a child.

And Claire.......  well, she is good about putting things away in their proper places, returning things as they were, pushing in chairs... that kind of thing.  

I like it.

But I'll also (usually) happily embrace the chaos when that's called for.  I'm working on that.

I have a few cute bird prints to hang on her walls and then that's it for now.  She loves to play in her room, loves to pile her finger puppets all into her little red barn, loves to color and read and spin and practice turning her bedside lamp on and off......

Loves to do everything in there but sleep.

Of course, I can't say that I'm trying all that hard to persuade her.  I will get her sleeping in there some day.  I will.  I will.  I will.

Tonight, as I laid next to her in (my) bed trying to get her to fall asleep, she decided instead to climb up onto my side and lay on me.  Her little face smushed right on my head.  Lovely. 

I was slightly annoyed by this.  Maybe more than slightly.  Certainly a bit defeated feeling.  (If you know us at all in real life, you know that sleep is not and has never been a strong point of Claire's.  I, on the other hand, love it and miss it dearly.....)

So, I was feeling like that until she started saying "mama mama mama mama mama" and then "mama I love you mama I love you mama I love you mama I love you"

I think I actually held my breath so that I could hear it all even just a tiny bit more clearly.  Really, really, hear it and feel it and allow it to soak into my bones.

And she had me.  Just like that.  I was left defenseless.  Decidedly not annoyed or defeated but instead soaring and smiling and smitten.

Damn, she's good.