Growing Pains

     Reality check.  Etienne got lost at the YMCA soccer fields.  He had been instructed to stay next to Blake but he didn't.  Twice.  I found him the second time we went missing in the parking lot.  Truthfully, although there were hundreds of other people, most of them probably knew he belonged to me.  Still.  It was scary.  Any parent can testify to that.
     After he was found again, I had told him he needed to have quiet time in his room.  We began talking about "big boy" choices and getting ready for school some day.   I was going on about how he has a hard time making good choices when he is  tired and he started to sob.

"I just wanna be like everybody else."

     Well that stopped me in my tracks.  I felt like I was looking down, watching myself be a mean mama, laying on the guilt, and immediately I felt awful for telling him he needed to rest because he wasn't making "big boy" choices.  I climbed into bed and he let me rock him.
     I told him that when everybody else was a baby, they got to suck their thumb, be rocked and wear diapers but he didn't .  I told him I was sorry that Daddy and Mommy weren't with him when he was a baby and that if it took him longer to be a big kid, we were okay with that. We were making up for lost time.  We cried together.
     Than Blake climbed up on top of Etienne and me.  Bony boy in just his underwear, cause that's how we roll.  Blake told E, "You don't need to be like anyone else because you are the funniest and fun.  And sometimes when you are funny you get in trouble.  It happens to me at school when I am funny.  Sometimes I accidently get in trouble, like with the projector" (I decided to let that go).  Then he laid his little blonde head on Etienne's chest and that's where we stayed.
     I know that this is growth.  He is starting to recognize that some of his behaviors aren't "normal."  I believe that for change to occur, he has to be aware that it is needed.  But at what cost?  No mother wants her child to feel left out.  If Molly said she wanted to be like everyone else, I would scold her and tell her that different is awesome.  But for my black baby in a white world, this statement is so enormous.  Ugh.  We talked, the three of us scrunched on the bottom bunk, about how only God can make us change.  E kept insisting that he could do it, no matter what way I or silly Blake tried to explain it.  Etienne's mind couldn't accept that God is our strength and our refuge.  But enough talk for one day, right?
     All these major heart wrenching moments while Daddy is out of town.  I don't know how much this mama heart can endure.  Thank goodness for our semi nude comedian.