I have been thinking about that. The way we are all able to "escape time" for a while in our twenties. We finish university and then we just sort of exist for a while. First 'real' jobs, traveling, Peace Corps, getting married, medical school, working at Starbucks, whatever....We may live in one place or a series of places with a rotating cast of characters. Time is flowing and nebulous for a while. Nobody is having growth spurts of changing very much in the physical sense. Time seems to flow but also to stand still. We are afforded the luxury of believing we will escape time and be young forever. Then someone has a baby and that happy little day dream honks twice, sticks its tongue out and disappears into the desert leaving a silhouette of dust a la road runner. You have a baby and you start living in weeks, not years anymore WEEKS! Do you have any idea how fast a week goes by? I am here to tell you it goes so fast you can't even make your eyes bring it into focus. You have to take a picture of it as it rushes on by so you can look at it and study it later because now it is moving too quickly for you to get a good look. That baby changes every day too. Now days, which once happily blurred together in your nebulous 20 something time soup, are significant units of measurement. You can see things evolve in a matter of days! The last time a few DAYS mattered was when you had a big assignment due in school. Since then, days might as well be months. Babies grow and change so quickly you are no longer able to escape to that magical place where none of us is aging. With a baby around you see that we are all aging and time is fucking flying by.
When we brought R home she was just a tiny tiny peanut girl. She was barely 8lbs and I was sure I was going to break her arms every time I changed her onsie. She slept nearly constantly, had a tiny raisin on her belly from where we had been connected for the last 9 months and she looked like she was being eaten alive by the cloth diapers.
Today, she is 15 weeks old. She would rather stand up and look around than just about anything else. She has a very distinct sense of what is funny and what is crap. She is growing out of clothes left, right and center. She knows who her mom and dad are as well as her aunty. She is starting to be more comfortable with a handful of other people too. She sleeps well, eats well and really likes live music. She smiles and even the crankiest soul would have to smile. She is charming as hell! I have been her mom (officially) for 105 days.
I never imagined I would take so much time off of work when she arrived but it has been the best thing I have ever ever EVER done. There is so much to do with her. She has so much to teach me and we had some hurdles to clear after the way she came into the world. I am so glad I have had this time with her. Being with her every day has taught me her signals and has taught her to trust in me. Now, as she has learned to trust me, she is learning to trust other people and to be comfortable being passed about as long as she can come back to me at the end of the day. This is the time that you can't ever get back. I suppose it all is but this time is OUR time. We live in a tiny little world full of smiles and drool, walks in the sunshine and adventures out and about. She and I are having a lot of fun getting to know each other and I wouldn't be anywhere else for anything in the world. It has been the blink of an eye, the last 105 days. At first I panicked when I thought about going back. I still do a little but it gets better every week. I am so thankful to have so much time with her now. I know it will be just another blink of an eye before she no longer wants to sleep next to me and she is telling me that I "just don't understand". But for now, I will snuggle her next to me, take a long, deep sniff of her head and thank the universe for this gift of my tiny peanut girl and the time and space to show her that I am 100%, unequivocally, hers.
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