The past 525,600 minutes (I refuse to type that out again) have, indeed, been the most precious of my life so far. At 7:49 pm on a warm Saturday evening in June, all at once, I fell in love, had my biggest dream fulfilled and felt my heart break in a completely new way. I remember a very real feeling of panic as they placed this tiny peanut-person in my very shaky, unsteady, new-Mom arms. "Can't these nurses see that I don't know what I'm doing? Are they really going to leave her with me? What now??"
Looking back, I wish I could say that I remember more of our first few days and weeks together as a new family. Unfortunately, for about the first 3 months, I walked around my house half-robed in a zombie-like state, searching for either a paci, the coffee maker, or a burpcloth. So perhaps, the last year could be measured solely in the amount of time I spent awake when I should have been sleeping. I'm gonna guess it was about 495,000 minutes of the 525, 600.
But I have a confession. I didn't write in her baby book this year. *Bad Mommy.* I had every intention to. I even went out and bought a scrapbook, stickers, paper and special markers to do her very own scrapbook. And every time I open my hall closet and see all the materials still neatly tucked away in their original packaging, I laugh at my own naivety. Sure, after the baby goes down, the house is picked up, dinner is made and errands are run, why wouldn't I want to sit down and spend a couple of hours with a glue stick, scissors and stickers? I have a sneaky suspicion the book and all of it's components will be hanging out in our hall closet- quite possibly- until she's in college. So unfortunately, I wish I could tell you the exact date she said her first word, rolled over from tummy to back and vice versa, ate her first food and took her first steps, but I can't. But maybe knowing the dates isn't so important after all. I lived those moments with her, regardless of whether I made note of them elsewhere. And while my Mommy brain may not be functioning on all cylinders all of the time, I have come to realize that those moments are etched in my memory just as clear as if they happened yesterday: the way it felt to hold her for the first time, the way I melted when she smiled her first real smile (and I knew it wasn't gas), the first time she said "mama" to me and held her arms out to be picked up, the panic and helplessness I felt the first time we made a trip to the ER at 5:30 in the morning when she spiked a fever, the first time she walked to me....
These moments make up just a small fraction of the grand-total, but they are the ones that have helped define me as a mommy this year.
"In daylights, in sunsets, in midnights and cups of coffee" (and there were a lot of those)
"In inches, in miles, in laughter and strife
"In five-hundred twenty-five-thousand six hundred minutes
How do you measure a year in the life?"
How about love? There's been an abundance of it this past year and for that, I'm so grateful. :)
No comments:
Post a Comment