Before I had kids, I was kind of an impatient person (cue hysterical laughter from my entire family, friends and anyone who ever paid by check ahead of me in a grocery store line. Sorry about that, by the way. I was in kind of a hurry.).
I’ve always been fixated on the future, on its allure of uncertainty and adventure. Whatever phase I was in, my mind was on what was next. In high school, it was all about college, in college it was all about grad school and then that first job, and then the next and then the next…
Before we had kids, we lived in 14 houses in 10 years. We lived in six different cities, all in different states and one an ocean away. We had some wild and crazy adventures, and I always had my eye on the next one.
Even back when I was pregnant with Quinn, my mind was already thinking about the second kid, about life with older kids. About when I would go back to work.
Then she was born in June of 2009 and time ground to a halt. Days felt like weeks, but I still felt they were moving too quickly. I loved my baby so fiercely and I didn’t want her to change even one granule of her being. Of course she was changing constantly, and that made my heart sink.
I remember feeling sick to my stomach when I felt her first tooth pushing its way through her gumline. “But I will miss her gummy smile so much!” I would exclaim frantically to anyone who would listen. “Please wait,” I would beg her, God, the universe.
Here I am, in what feels like about 15 minutes later, and more than two years have gone by. I left my job to stay home with my baby. I am now the mother of two, and my second daughter is teething madly. I will miss her gummy smile so much I can’t stand it. My first daughter has a wide smile full of teeth, scampers up to the top of the tall slide at the park, tells me to play with my OWN hair when an errant finger dares to wind through her blonde curls, talks in paragraphs.
I can’t stand to think about the future now. Oh sure, some nights when I’m up intermittently with both girls, when I feel so fried I’m not sure I can walk another step, I’ll fantasize briefly about what life might be like when they’re a little older, when I can reach out to touch my husband in bed without a baby between us, or right next to us, or about to wake us up within an hour. When I can stay up late with friends and drink more than one glass of wine and work out and. . .
But then I’ll remember the force that passage of time will have on my girls, bringing them through their babyhoods and into the great world of girlhood or even beyond, and I’ll shudder at the thought.
Please wait. Please. I’m happy here, right now.
It goes by SO FAST. Zomg. I get all teary eyed thinking about it. I feel like I can’t remember any of it. Just a sleep deprived haze. So I snap lots of photos and shoot lots of video and think THIS. This is what life is all about.