I Am Still Needed

"Mom."  I think I hear my name.  "Hey, Mom!"  Definitely, that was someone calling me.

"Mom, are you in here?"  Jacob asks through the door.

"Just a second, please.  Let me turn off the hair dryer," I respond.  What is that saying about once you're a mom, you are never alone in the bathroom again?  Yep, it is definitely so true!  When Jacob was an infant, I would put him in his carrier and set him outside my shower.  He could see me and wouldn't cry because I could talk to him, sing to him.  I know, right?  You don't want to hear me sing, but Jacob and  Hope loved it.  As he got older, there was the lifeskill of potty training so I was always  in the bathroom with him, teaching him about the toilet and how it makes all this noise but won't swallow you up.  Oh how he loved to drop Cheerios in the water and watch them disappear!  Of course, since I was in there with him while he potty'd, and I would get all excited, "Yay, you went pee-pee!", he thought it was perfectly fine to be in the bathroom when I went.  Fair is only fair.

"Do you hear that?"  Jacob would whisper.  "Listen, there it goes!  You went pee-pee.  Yay!"  His sweet laughter would fill the room; his claps (and sometimes his whole body jumping up and down) would echo throughout the house.  His face would be animated with surprise if anything bigger happened.  You know...like pooping.  BIG praise then!

Currently on spring break, Jacob is spending his time with us, enjoying some time away from the home he has made away from home this year.  Just 25 years old, he is a head baseball coach and 7th grade math teacher, along with numerous other coaching duties in his tiny school.  He said just yesterday as he was walking upstairs with his sweet iced tea in one hand and his Goldfish crackers in the other, "I feel like I am 13 again, going upstairs to play X-Box with my friends online."

"Mom, can you hear me now?"  His voice brings me back to the present moment.  "When you are done in there, will you do me a favor?  I need you to pop this pimple in my nose."

Even when they are grown, your children will still need you, especially for those special tasks.  And because you love them unconditionally, you will take care of them the best way possible.  Treasure those moments; they are the memorable ones.