Today, Lexie napped.  She has been doing this more frequently in the last month than she has in the last 9 months.  So she got to stay up later (8pm, instead of 6:30pm).

Tonight, at about 7:30pm, we climbed into her bed with a pile of books and read.  We talked about all sorts of things and snuggled.  It is my absolute most favorite time.

We moved her to a big, big girl bed in June. She was just too big for the toddler bed. 

My favorite part about this?  Snuggling!  

We don’t co-sleep (if you do, that’s great!), but I love to snuggle my babies.  I love tip toeing into her room with her cup of milk after she wakes up in the mornings or from nap, and climbing in bed with her.

I love how full of life she is, and how everything is so fresh.  Everything is so new, and untainted.

I love her smile, her crazy facial expressions, those curls, and her beyond huge imagination; her obsession with trains and engines, which now also includes dinosaurs, and her ability to sing any song she hears almost on key.

She wants to hear “wagon wheel” by Darius Rucker over and over again.  She calls it “the rock me mama song.”

We have to stop the car now to let her engines in, because they didn’t get in when everyone else did …  They get eaten by dinosaurs and our pet dolphin “Fred the dolphin” quite frequently.

It “rains a lot” (not really…), so she needs her umbrella during independent play.  She can already quote all of Mary Poppins, and does so with perfection.

She may be a daddy’s girl, but she is my baby.

And who can ever love her like I do?  Who will ever be able to fill those shoes?  How can there possibly be someone out there, better suited for her than JTom or me?

It just doesn’t seem possible.

But then, as I ponder her future, I realize I have to get her to that point.  

Successfully.

How in the world am I supposed to fill those shoes?  She is so special, so different.  Brilliant.  Emotional. and Strong willed.  Oh, her strong willed personality may be the death of me.

How am I supposed to help her become a Godly young woman with a passion for something other than herself in this world where everything is me, me, me, now, now, now?  (and I am guilty of it, too…)

So I pray.  And I know she has free will and I can’t control everything she does when she becomes a young adult.  I don’t want to.  I want to mold and train a child that will use her free will and self control to become something amazing.  Whatever gift it is God has given her, I want her to use it.  

But we have to foster it.

So I pray.  I pray He protects her; her mind, her spirit, and her innocence.  I pray she seeks Him first, above all things.  And that she learns this world is not worth losing her soul over.

I know He gave us this tiny human for a reason.  She is meant to be ours; He knew exactly what He was doing when he formed her and blessed us as her parents.

I pray I can fill the shoes of being her mama.  And that I don’t let her down.