Love,Time, Silence and Stillness

I am so in love with this little girl.  I mean, how can you not be in love with this face???

Sometimes I just stare at her.  For a long time.  Over and over again it strikes me that she is becoming a little person....I mean, she is a person....but she is really becoming a little person.  Sometimes I cannot believe that I successfully grew her from scratch.  Sometimes it's so hard to believe that anything so intricate could have grown and developed in my belly.

She has had the sweetest disposition since the day she was born, but now she is really beginning to develop personality.  Her smile is nothing but contagious and her giggle is hilarious (only because it's so subdued).  She is beginning to develop preferences, but more importantly, she is making them known.  :-)    She's been eating solids for a little over a month now, and she looks forward to (and gets excited about) eating.  She knows where she wants to be and she makes every effort she can to get her little body there. 

I look at her and wonder where she is going.  I look at her and wonder who and what she will be.  Part of me wants to fast forward to find the answers.  Part of me wants to freeze time and keep her little forever.  And part of me (the smallest part) is happy to know that time will just continue to march on - one day at a time - whether I want it to or not, with each day presenting pieces of the who/what/where/when puzzle.  I just hope that I'm around to see the completed picture many years down the road. 

I am slowly learning to find some solace and peace in stillness and silence.  For many reading here, silence and stillness are not always what they seem to be; our experiences with silence and stillness have brought unimaginable pain and broken hearts.  I am specifically finding peace and solace in the silence and stillness that come with nap time and bed time.  There is no experience that compares to loving your baby to sleep.  Nothing in the world rivals the feeling I get when I cuddle her to sleep, and then just soak in all the baby love that just oozes from her.  I treasure each of these moments in the silence and stillness, especially now, since she has reached the point that there is no rest in her little body when she is awake (which means absolutely no waking cuddle time right now).  While there will certainly be lots of cuddles in our future, I know that these particular moments will never come again. 

But there are times that I can't help but expect that the amazing silence and stillness of bedtime will roll right back into the silence and stillness that I first knew.  Sometimes I am afraid to love her so much - I think primarily because I am still waiting for the other shoe to fall.  So many nights I sit in the midst of that silence and stillness and just rock her until my legs can't rock anymore, just wanting those moments to never end.  There are more nights than I would like to admit that, as I rock her, the top of her little head is watered by the tears that fall freely from my face.  To be honest, some nights I don't know whether the tears are for the baby who came before her or because of the fears that are always just beneath the surface.  I suppose it's also possible that they are just a general release mechanism. 

So frequently when I check on her as she sleeps, I actually expect to find her breathless and cool to the touch...  I know that as long as I have the Ang.el C.are monitor turned on while she sleeps, it will not let me down if something were to happen, but still, I am occasionally surprised to find her breathing.  I know that it's normal for parents to worry, and that the worry will never end, even when my 'babies' are all grown...but I just sometimes I just feel like there is an unreasonable amount of worry that comes with being a BLM (plus that ridiculous waiting for the other shoe to fall stuff...). 

Like it or not, I am learning to live with the ups and downs of having both a living child and an angel.  I am learning to say angel instead of dead baby (primarily so Jenna doesn't go to preschool in a few years talking about the dead baby...)  I am learning to live with the memories, the 'what ifs' and the unending shoulda/woulda/coulda beens.  I am enjoying every moment of mothering my little live-wire child, and looking forward to a lifetime with her...and the sibling(s) yet to come...