Mama, you're lying in my forest

Quite often when listening to pregnant-for-the-first-time friends detailing their plans I find myself thinking "should I tell them? Or is it kinder to let them enjoy the fantasy?" This usually happens in the context of supremely in-control people explaining how the baby really isn't going to change their lives that much, the child is going to fit in with them rather than the other way around, they will not change their habits, etc. etc. I usually resolve the dilemma by reminding myself that it wouldn't make any difference if I did tell them because they wouldn't believe me anyway. From *that* side of the parent-nonparent divide (I remember, having been there once) it's only the inexplicable spinelessness of some parents that leads to them being so in thrall to their offspring.

So there's a whole bunch of stuff we don't bother to communicate across the gulf; we just have to wait with tea and sympathy ready for the day they arrive all wide-eyed and gibbering on this side.

Not all the stuff we neglect to talk about is horrible, though. For some reason I hardly ever mention in public quite how delicious it can be to have my sleep disrupted at 5:30am by a wriggly three-year-old saying "cuddle me, Mama!", throwing her little arms around my neck and breathing loudly into my face. When did she get the "d" sound right and stop saying "cuggle"? I didn't notice... and part of the reason I don't mind being woken at 5:30 is that someday I'll realise it hasn't happened for a while and then I will miss it. Even now those fiercely possessive little cuddles don't last long before she's off on a new tangent. By 6am I was being ordered out of the middle of the bed -- "you lying in my forest!" -- so she could burrow down under the duvet and have a long conversation with the elves who apparently live somewhere near my feet.

Last Thursday night her big sister lost her first tooth and started on the final stage of the journey out of infancy. She's got so tall and skinny; she's still wearing trousers that fit her three years ago, except now they're very short and tend to fall off if she jumps up and down. I keep wishing I could fix them in time, just for a few moments to get a clear bearing, but they're always way ahead of me, accelerating. Sometime next week she'll start rolling her eyes at me and being embarrassed; in the meantime, I'll take every cuddle I can get.