Savoring

This weekend, I found myself crunching numbers in my head and realizing that, if all goes according to plan, 2.0 will be blessing us with her presence in just under 7 weeks. That woke me up a bit.

I find that I'm now spending my days treasuring my time with J. I savor them like a fine piece of chocolate melting decadently in my mouth. Not too much longer until she's no longer an only child...and that worries me. I mean, talk about an adjustment she'll have to make. I don't know realistically how hard it's going to be to divide my attention between her and a little one. I bet it's going to be incredibly hard yet I am going to do everything in my power to give her as much of myself as I can. I don't want to hurt her by the lessened level of attention but I know she may be confused or hurt or any other emotion you can think of and that pains me to my core.

I'm an only child, my mother is an only child. I'm not experienced with the dynamics of multi-sibling families--yet, I'll soon be the co-head of one (A is one of 3 children). I'm worried about the logistics of it all, of making it work, of being fair, of everything.

J is such a wonderful kid. She's funny and charming (okay, not all the time but...) and makes me laugh a lot (and makes me mutter and curse, both under my breath and out loud) every day. And every day brings new things it seems. Recently, she's begun telling me when she's gone poop in her diaper ("poo-poo" while grabbing at herself). She loves to mother her stuffed animals (as you can see from the picture above, excuse the red eye) and even Elmo.

Oh, how she lights up when I go in to take her out of her crib in the morning and she has the cutest way of saying please ("peesh") when she wants something (what can I say? we're trying to instill good manners in her from an early age onward) and so so much more. I could go on and on but instead I'm treasuring these times in my head and in my heart, knowing there will soon be an additional pull for my time and attention.

I won't ever forget this time alone with her. I will treasure it always. It's been the best 18 months (TODAY!) of my life by far. She's small and sassy but she's huge in my heart. She's my baby, my girl, and the one who's helping me earn my mother 'wings' day-by-day and, as my MIL so eloquently put it while here this past weekend, "even when she's 73, she'll still be my baby."