I want my Mommy!!

This post should have been written several months ago... Like August/September. Oh, well.
So, over the summer my hubs, Rylee's dad, was on deployment. So I filled my days meeting other moms and their kids to hang out and just pass time, which was way more fun than sitting at home. Plus, bonus, real adult conversation! Rylee was really starting to use more words and even knew the name of her closest (like down the street close) friend. So cute.
Now, when I was growing up, pretty much all of my Mom's friends were from church, so she told me to call them Sister So-and-so, or Brother Whats-his-name. And at the least, people older than me were "Miss" or "Mr." This was the basic manners for respecting adults. After contemplating if this was still a manners thing, or, totally outdated, I settled on calling my mom friends "Miss" whatever their name was. I got excited that Rylee might start calling them by name as it appeared she was recognizing my friends when we met up. Unfortunately, to my horror, Rylee started calling all my mom friends, "mom." WHAT!??!! I'm "mom"!!!!
Rylee didn't call me anything. No "mom" in the middle of the night. No "mommy" when she got a boo-boo. Nothing. And she didn't have to. I was the only one around. When she cried, I was the one who came. When she fell, I picked her up. A dear friend pointed out that there was no dad around to be calling me mom. Rylee didn't know what to call me. I was just there, and I was just sad.
Fast forward a few short months and Rylee finally caught on. How my heart burst to hear, "Mommy!" when I picked her up at daycare at the gym. How I teared up when she said, "nigh nigh, mom." Oh, how precious, that one word out of her sweet, tiny mouth.
It is almost hard to remember those touching times now, as all I hear is, "mom, mom, mom, MOM!!" O!M!G! "I am RIGHT HERE"  I say. She will do it if I'm reading a book and she wants to point something out. She will do it if I'm taking a quick moment to send a text. She will do it even if we are making eye contact!!! EYE CONTACT!!!
I laugh to think of the total paradox in feeling that changed from one extreme to the other in so short a time. I thought about the proverb, "be careful what you wish for." Then I wondered, what was I really wishing for? Just wishing she would call me mom and be... correct?
I think at the time I was really just wishing for the hard mom times to be over and for that small word to show me that she realized all I was for her and all I was doing for her. The sleepless nights, alone, rocking her because she had a cold and she was so congested she couldn't suck her thumb to settle down and sleep. The days of guilt wondering if so much TV was going to cause permanent damage. The long, boring days when I was just sad that hubby was not with us. I needed to know she knew it was me.
Mom. The word means so much.