A lesson learned

My sweet one year old daughter taught me something today.  I love how much I get to learn from my children, probably way more than they learn from me (ok, slight exaggeration).  I laid her and her brother down for a nap. We are working on getting them to sleep in the same room at nap time. We have had night time sleep sharing down for several months, but she was just sleeping in our room during naptime. I was getting kind of sick of not being able to go in there and clean, or put away clothes, or get to my craft stuff during nap time.  AKA the only time I get to do stuff alone.  So she cried when I first laid them down, and he told her to be quiet.  It took a few times of him saying "SHH!" before she stopped and they both went down.  I haven't been feeling so peachy lately, so I laid down to rest as well.  Less than an hour later she started crying.  I decided she could just cry, and put herself back to sleep.  She needed more sleep than that, and I didn't want to get up.  She cried for 15 minutes before I finally got up.  I threw the blanket off, marched into their room, picked her up, and marched back out to deal with her (so as not to wake Thomas, who will sleep through her crying no matter how upset she gets).  She lets out one good scream, and then as I close her door, she laid her head on my chest and stopped crying.  I instantly felt sorry that I had gotten so upset with her, and decided to snuggle with her in my bed. She laid on me for a few minutes, and then moved to being beside me.  I tried to get her back to sleep, but she wouldn't do it.  So I got upset again, because I couldn't force my desire for sleep onto a one year old-I know, not my most shining moment in motherhood.  And I said "Lorelai! Why won't you go to sleep!" slightly forcefully, and she looked right at me and was suddenly so sad and contrite looking.  She snuggled up to me and rested with me for a good 15 minutes before she wanted to get up and play. 
That girl.  I love her so much, and she is really good at getting what she wants.  But today I realized she wasn't just doing something to get what she wanted, she just wanted her mommy to hold her and comfort her.  She is helping me to understand patience and compassion. I adore my children, and I often forget that to them I am "Mommy".  In the same way my mom used to be able to make anything better, and always knew where things were, and how to do everything, now I am that to my children. Sometimes they want nothing more than me to hold them, and let them know that everything is alright.  I am not a perfect mother, quite far from it, in fact.  But my children seem to love me unconditionally anyway.  I want to be like that. I want to be able to see past someone's imperfections and their lapses in patience and kindness, and just love them.  And my sweet one year old and vivacious three year old are teaching me how.