My baby you'll be

I know my job as a mother is to raise my baby boy to be a good, honest, successful, kind man.....but I don't wannuhhhhhhhh!

The other day when we went swimming, the pool was filled with overgrown testosterone containers in the shape of teenage boys. The wrestled, the chicken fought, they built man-towers 4 people high, they yelled and screamed and cannonballed, they made fun of each other, they completely disregarded anybody else within 15 miles and were generally....like teenage boys. I came home and cried because I thought that maybe my Baby Thomas might someday go through an "obnoxious smelly overgrown teenage boy" phase.

This weekend we met Baby Lucy. She really is an angel, and she's beautiful, and calm, and reverent and well behaved. I came home and cried because I thought that maybe my adorable little fetus might turn into a real live baby who other people can take away from me (and by "take away from me, I mean hold without me touching him") and who can get as much love from someone else as his own mama.

On Sunday we sat behind a family in church whose children were beautiful and reverent wearing missionary hair and glasses. (I secretly think glasses make a child act more reverent, so I'm secretly planning to get Baby Thomas glasses without corrective lenses asap.) Their 8(ish) year old in his blue sport coat and khaki pants laid down reverently under the bench and nearly filled the space between the bench legs with his long lanky body. I came home and cried because I thought that maybe someday my Baby might outgrow my lap and have to lie down under the bench instead. And then I realized that maybe someday he might outgrow the "under the bench" and have to sit up while he sleeps through Sacrament Meeting like his dad. And then I sobbed.

As I write this, I imagine my mommy and her baby (who has a wife, a job, a home, and 3 babies of his own) and how it must break her heart that other people can hold him and love him, he passed through the obnoxious smelly teenage boy phase (and probably still has his smelly days....), and there's no way all 6'2" of him fits under the bench at church. She must ache for the days that she could rock him back and forth, back and forth, back and forth while singing him a song.

I'm sure I'm tough enough to handle pregnancy, I'm sure I'm tough enough to handle labor and delivery, but am I tough enough to handle growing up? I don't think so. So, as far as I'm concerned....as long as I'm living, my baby he'll be.