I spent the afternoon yesterday with Jenean and little Eli.   *Jenean took the picture above.

Her house is so comforting, the light is calm and with all the doors and windows open, you can hear the creek that runs right beside her house.  I don't remember any lights on in her house it was all natural light, and sweet country air passing through all the rooms.   I could easily just sit and get lost in Eli.

 I thought when I took this picture below, that I would delete it because he looks so unhappy, but when I uploaded it and saw it large I liked it.  I like it because, it stirs up a visceral urge in me to reach into the picture and snuggle him and "there there" him.  And it reminds me of what happened next, Jenean picked him up and her smell her touch the exact way she rocked him, he calmed. 

It is one of the beauties of being a Mom.  It is her arms, her kiss, her voice that Eli wants and his entire seven pound body relaxes when he is with her.  Her love is a form of food for him.

So that is why I am posting this picture because it reminds me of the enormous responsibility and gift I have been given with Jeff Eti and Chloe.

My kids are not newborns but the needs are strong and they still think I am their entire world.  When I enjoy them they explode with content.  So I am posting this picture because I left Jeneans with an intense desire to love on my kids.

"My sole consolation when I went upstairs for the night, was that Mama would come in and kiss me after I was in bed.  But the goodnight lasted for so short a time;  she went down again so soon, that the moment in which I heard her climb the stairs, and then caught the sound of her garden dress of blue muslin.. rustling along the double-doored corridor was for me a moment of keenest sorrow.  So much did I love that goodnight, that I  reached the stage of hoping it would come as late as possible, so as to prolong the time of respite during which Momma would not yet have appeared."   --Marcel Proust "Swan's Way"