He’s Still My Baby Boy

Usually he’s busy asserting his independence.  Although he’s 5, he reads at a second-grade level and his father and I can no longer use spelling as a secret code.  And yet, today, as he languished in bed with a high fever, JavaBoy seemed more like my baby boy again than the boy who has been losing teeth and growing legs longer than his pants.

He needed his Mommy today.

I hated watching how pathetic he looked, at times complaining about how hot he was and other times feeling chilled.  Too sick to be interested in food — much different from the child who says, “I’m hungry” practically every 10 minutes including yesterday.

As I snuggled up next to him in bed, and scratched his head and buried my nose in his hair, I almost felt like I caught a whiff of that scent babies have — a scent JavaBoy lost long ago now that he’s a Big Boy.  But I remembered all those nights that I held him in my arms, rocking him or just snuggling him at night, worrying about the things new moms worry about, while taking in that baby smell.

We play a game, where I sometimes try to scoop him up, long legs and all, and I say, “Ohhh, where did my baby JavaBoy go?  Where did he go?  Can I smoosh you all up back into a baby and stick you back in my tummy?”  He finds this quite hysterical because of course this is quite ridiculous — the thought of him ever being that small seems so very silly.  And yet he knows he’ll always be my baby boy.

I look at him tonight, fever temporarily quashed with Tylenol, but fitful in his sleep, and I realize that Moms still worry, even when they aren’t new moms anymore.

Tagged as: family, Kids, Motherhood, parenting