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Tuesday, August 6, 2013

the greatest joy

My mother has told me this a few times now, and it definitely rings true. She's been asked many times in her life if she would ever go back to a time before she had kids. A time when life was simpler and you had the freedom to do whatever you wanted to without worrying about who will take care of your baby or how or what your child is doing. Her response is a resounding "That's a stupid question." I now know exactly what she's talking about.

My daughter was born back in June and she may only be 8 weeks old, but I can't imagine her not being here, nor do I want to. The past 8 weeks have been such an amazing journey of discovery and patience...lots of patience... I've wanted to get started on this journey for as long as I can remember, and I can finally say, I have not been disappointed. The transformation over the past 2 months has been truly amazing to watch, especially over the past couple weeks. 

Recently, she started to really interact with us. She always kind of did, but she had a glazed over kind of look, since she could only see a couple feet at best. I could write a book on the stuff I've learned about babies that I never new before; for instance, their eyes aren't fully developed when they're born so they can only see basically the distance from the boobs to the eyes of their mother. Babies have hair all over their bodies when they're in the womb, then they swallow it shortly before birth, and those messy diapers are really weird looking... 

Now when my coworkers ask me what I did over the weekend, or the night before, I usually have the same answer. "Watched the baby."

I could watch her all day. It's amazing to watch her squirm around and pause briefly as a flicker of light catches her eye. And let me tell you, if there's a bit of light in her field of view, she's gonna find it, and she's gonna stare at it for a LONG time. It's so cute when she does too. It's so cute when she makes little faces that scream "What the hell was that!" or "There's something wrong with you."

It's only been 8 weeks, but it's been an amazing 8 weeks that I wouldn't trade for the world.