Easy to forget...

how important I am to the kids.

Tonight as I was giving Eliana her bedtime backrub, Kes started rolling around in bed, still asleep, but frowning and said, "Mama!" I teared up. She has been testing limits with me so much lately. But there it was, laid out by her subconscious: I'm the one she needs, whatever the pain, fear, uncertainty. She's still a baby, still so vulnerable, still so entwined with me.

Even Eliana. This transition to kindergarten, as well as it is going, has been a window into Eliana's needs. Last night, she couldn't settle down at bedtime. Finally I said, "Is there anything you are excited about or nervous about?" She said, "I'm nervous about my new friends." I said, "What is it about your new friends that's making you nervous?" And she said, "I don't know them very well yet." So we talked about how she'd been through this before with preschool, how the other kids don't know each other either, and that she's good at making friends. And then she fell asleep. And when I picked her up today, she yelled, "Mommy!" in a way that she's never done before with preschool. There's just a little more connection there right now, connection that she initiates. I hope that we can keep it up even when the transition is over.

I thought about all this tonight after I left Elly's bedside. So much time is spent at this age in a struggle for them to be able to assert themselves as independent people. Our interactions are so often about them distancing themselves from me: power struggles, testing limits. It makes it so easy to lose sight of just how much they still need my approval, my reassurance, my presence. I've never lost sight of how much they need my love and I don't believe they've ever had even a sliver of doubt of how much I love them. But it's easy to forget that for all of their forging their own identities, I'm the mirror that they look in at the end of the day to see who they're becoming. It's a big responsibility to be that mirror and I need to keep it in mind. And I need to treasure their vulnerability and my place in making them feel rooted, while it lasts. This is such a precious time.