I Feel Like a Bad Mommy!

I feel like a horrible mommy....today, I put Molly in her swing (her Big Girl swing! YAY! She finally fits in it and her head doesn't bobb all around! LOL) and turned on BabyFirst TV and she totally passed out!!!!! I felt hooooooorrrrrrrrriiiiiiiibbbbbbbbllllllleeeeeeee! It broke my heart to see her slumped over to her right side, head resting on her chubby, precious arm, asleep and tuckered out from the "Shushybye" programming segment. UGH!! As a mom, does this guilty feeling that you've failed your child, well, does it EVER go away??!

Todd drove the truck to Tulsa today to pick up a freezer at Sears. I told him about it; I told him how badly I felt about her dozing in her swing. He said that since her head wasn't slumped forward she ought to be fine, and I know he's right....but honestly? One of us has ALWAYS had this baby in our arms when she has fallen asleep...and now that she has fallen asleep in her swing, well, it is just FOREIGN to me. Maybe it is ME having separation anxiety, heck, I don't know...but when I looked across (our very large) living room and noticed that she'd fallen asleep, my heart sank. Is THIS what motherhood is all about? Is THIS what makes up the initial feelings of guilt in early motherhood, the feeling that your child will actually be OKAY if you're not with them every step of the way?! I hate feeling this way. I can't put my finger on whether it is that Molly Piper is getting older and thus does not need me as much as she once needed me, or whether I simply felt bad because the swing lulled her and the TV show tuckered her and therefore replaced my singing, dancing, stroking her head, you know, the routine I NORMALLY perform when I'm trying my darndest to get her to sleep.

I've said it many times and here, now, I will say it again: As a mommy, I'm finding that you get a whole NEW set of worries. The old worries aren't replaced. They're just multiplied by 100, and they all involve your child, your baby, your heart and soul, the very breath you take. It's heartbreaking, but at the same time, heartWARMING...

She is getting so BIG! I can't believe my eyes. She will roll over during tummy time, from tummy to back, but she only does this with me. She won't do it with her daddy! LOL. I have tried to coax, plead and beg, because honestly, I think it is the sweetest thing, witnessing one of her milestones, but she simply refuses to do this when Todd is in the vicinity! LOL. I am hoping she rolls for him soon, though. It really IS the most adorable thing I think I've ever seen. After she rolls onto her back, we then do our daily exercises: Pat-A-Cake, arm and leg circles, The Bicycle...you name it, I'm sure we do it or have done it! LOL. She always ends up turning her head toward the TV, though! She's just like her daddy with that stinkin' TV...they both LOVE it! I don't know if it's because she's looking for her Baby Einstein or if she just likes the colors and the movement, but PUUUUHHHHLLLEEEEASE, LORD, don't let her be a couch potato! I hope to break her of this habit when she becomes more mobile and can move around more. She has great head control at this point, so she tends to turn her head when she hears an interesting/familiar voice....

I LOVE BEING MOLLY'S MOMMY.

Got my life insurance policy in the mail the other day. Yeah, um, kind of depressing, but oh-so-necessry, for the "just in case". If anything happens to me, I want Molly to be able to go to college if she wants to. I want Todd to be able to pay off bills and not worry about making ends meet PLUS raising a daughter on his own. I have asked just one thing of Todd, though: That he tell Molly all about me and not ever be hesitant to share details about me, my life, who I am. Losing my mother as young as I did, unfortunately I didn't have this legacy or privilege. No one ever talks about her. It is as if she has been forgotten, but not to me. I *so* do not want my Precious Molly to feel this way about me, should anything ever happen to me. I want her to know how much I absolutely LOVE her, how I would die for her or give her a kidney or work 5 jobs to put her through school. Because I do. And I will. Whatever it takes, I want this baby to grow up happy, healthy and emotionally secure and stable in the fact that she has 2 parents who love her dearly. We may not have MUCH, but since love is priceless anyway, what we have or don't have is proven irrelevant...and when you really come right down to it, LOVE is what matters the most. I think of that song, "Love's the Only House" by Martina McBride and it makes me tear up.

Here are the lyrics to the song I am thinking of tonight:

I was standing in the grocery store line
The one they marked express
When this woman came through with about 25 things
And I said don't you know that more is less
She said this world is moving so fast
But I just get more behind with every day
And every morning when I make my coffee
I can't believe my life's turned out this way
All I could say was

Love's the only house big enough for all the pain in the world
Love's the only house big enough for all the pain

He was walking by the other day and I said
Hey baby how you been?
Yeah I got me a little girl now and she's 4 years old
And she's got her daddy's little grin
And you only want what you can't have
And baby you can't have me nowI gave my heart to another
Yeah I'm a mother and he's a father and we're a family
And we've got each other
And I found out the hard way that

Love's the only house big enough for all the pain in the world
Love's the only house big enough for all the pain

You drive three miles from all this prosperity
Down across the river and you see a ghetto there
And we got children walking around with guns
And they got knives with drugs and pain to spare
And here I am in my clean, white shirt
With a little money in my pocket and a nice warm home
And we got teenagers walkin' around in a culture of darkness
Livin' together alone, and all I can say is

Love's the only house big enough for all the pain in the world
Love's the only house big enough for all the pain
And I can't explain it and I can't understand
But I'll come down and get my hands dirty and together we'll make a stand

Somewhere cross the parking lot some bands playin out of tuneCity streets are gonna burn if we don't do something soon
And senorita can't quit cryin, baby's due now any day
Don Juan left, got sick of tryin
No one there to show him the way she came down to the grocery store and
She said I, I wanna buy a little carton of milk but I don't have any money
I said hey I'll cover you honey cause the pain's gotta go somewhere
Yeah the pain's gotta go someplace
So come on down to my house
Don't you know thatLove's the only house big enough for all the pain in the world
Love's the only house big enough for all the pain