The Mom Salon | January 2022

The Little Things

By Eunice Brownlee Of all the things no one tells you before you become a mother, it’s how the little moments that annoy you will become meaningful when your kids get older.

When my daughter was early elementary age, she would always wake up at the crack of dawn on Saturday and the first thing she would do was come into my room and start chattering my ear off about something. At the time, it was likely Minecraft or Beanie Boos or whatever the fad of the week was. If podcasts had been as popular then as they are now, she could have easily done a four-part series on any topic before the sun came up.

I am not a morning person. And I am, admittedly, not exactly a kid person either. To have a little one encroaching on my Saturday morning snooze, the most sacred time of the week in my book, was rather annoying. I just wanted it to stop.

I did what any reasonable parent would do. I taught her how to make coffee. I told her that if she was going to wake me up on Saturday morning, she had better bring me coffee first.

The following week, I awoke as my little eight-year-old carefully tip toed into my room, trying desperately not to spill the over-full mug of coffee.

The sheer amount of concentration she was putting in to keep all the liquid inside the rim was so cute, I couldn’t stand it. As she set it down proudly, I hugged her and thanked her and she climbed into bed with me, as she began her morning talkfest.

I picked up the mug to take a swig and fully expected it would be a terrible cup of coffee. But no, she nailed it. I was impressed. We snuggled and I listened to her talk about things I definitely did not care about.

After a while, instead of making me coffee, she would just crawl into bed next to me and cuddle. As she got older, she got less chatty and I really started to miss those mornings where she would word vomit on me while 15