My days right now are much the same but no two are ever alike. Kinda like snowflakes.

This morning my sweet Lily was nursing and heading off to sleep for her morning nap and she refused to let go of me. Normally she falls off to sleep nursing and her daddy scoops her up and has his daddy daughter morning nap but today she wanted me, and it is my great pleasure that I have a life that allows us to just go with it. Her daddy went off to do my morning chores and I stayed in bed snuggled up with our girl.

We traded out and shared time throughout the whole day, depending on what we were doing and whether Lily could participate with our activities. At one point today, her naps having got off track after a visit with Gramma on Skype, I thought she was tired and when she started showing me her sign for ‘Potty” I kept telling her she was tired and to just sleep. She was right and I was wrong and although I listened at the last minute and got her to the potty, and she rewarded me with a huge toothless grin, I wondered, “Why don’t I trust her?” She does sign for potty sometimes when she does not need it but she will be needing something else and never has she signed for potty when she is tired. She does not have other signs yet, but she is learning and if you ask is she is hungry “Do you want a boob?” (That’s a story for another day) you get a huge smile if she is hungry. So why am I already not trusting her? It is something that is very important to me, to her father and I, to trust her. So she can trust herself, we don’t want to fall into the ‘because I said so’ parenting. It does not mean we will not offer direction and enforce it if her safety it at stake but for the other stuff we want her to lead the way. Like the fact that she wants to use the potty, her choice and so it should be her choice when she gets to sit on it!

Thankfully she is not into holding a grudge, but right now she is very tired so I am going to go and hold my little girl, nurse her and fall asleep. After all that is why we live like we do, so at any moment we can stop and do what our hearts want most, and right now my heart wants to be with my daughter most.

She pulls them out of the box one at a time, or in fistfuls, her happiness is lighting up her eyes as she discovers their texture in her hands, tastes them on her tongue, feels them fall on her face and belly. She has learned to let go of them now so she can increase her joy with more tissues pulled from the box.

What is a box of tissues when handed to my little girl one week away from celebrating her 5 months birthday?

Mess? Sure.

So many crinkled tissues they no longer fit back in the box? Yes.

Torn and soggy tissues? Definitely.

A few yells of frustration as she figures out how to get her hand out of the box she has been waving around madly? Every time, but each time a little later with a little less frustration as she figures it all out.

Increasing dexterity? Totally.

Increasing her knowledge of her world? Yep.

Getting her to stretch out her reach? Of course.

Developing her problem solving skills?…

I could go on and on and on, but when it comes right down to it the only part that matters is she is having fun. Why analyse the value of something based on anything other than the happiness it brings you? True fulfilling happiness not the passing momentary kind. That is what we hope to help our daughter learn. To learn to do whatever makes her happy, what resonates with her heart. Parenting for us is helping her to learn to distinguish between the types of happiness; attraction and resonance and that to live a fulfilling life she needs to choose from the resonance happiness more than the attraction happiness. Thankfully we have a few years to figure it all out and for now we can just enjoy the tissues.