It’s astounding to realize that something I was supposed to do regularly seems to have fallen off the face of the earth and I’ve only just now gotten back to it.
I created this blog what seems like eons ago and two years has passed since I gave it a thought but as the title here says, so much time can change so much. Friendships begin, sometimes end, or change for the better. Lives become upended by something as tiny as two pink lines on a white plastic stick. People grow, change, come into your life, you lose jobs, find new ones, buy cars, pay bills and somewhere in the midst of all the chaos, you find beauty and if you’re lucky, sometimes stumble into just sheer happiness. The only thing is…. you have to work to keep it there.
I’ve learned that the past two years and I’ve grown to where the work doesn’t feel like work, it’s the easy as breathing day to day ins and outs of my family. Sure there are still bills, cars still break, we still get sick and the dishes still need to be done, but atop all the minutiae is a genuine calm and comfort that I am where I belong.
It was over two years ago now that mine and my husbands world was upended by what I mentioned earlier, two pink lines on a white plastic stick. A couple of hyperventilating phone calls and one doctors appointment later and the world began to spin… we were starting a family. This was truly a revelation from two people who had decided that having children wasn’t a necessity, it wasn’t out of the cards but it also wasn’t squarely in them either, we’d have been happy together with our cats. Fast forward from that day to now and I can’t fathom why it wasn’t a necessity, our daughter, our colorful, sometimes crazy but altogether adorable daughter is such a bright spot in this house that I can’t see it without her.
I won’t wax poetic and swear that pregnancy was a magical experience that I want to experience five times over… it’s not. Pregnancy, for me at least, was riddled with aches, pains, nausea, bleeding, a stomach virus and mood swings that made me (as well as my husband) question my sanity. And those who say that having a child is expensive? Believe me that’s not anything close to a joke, but on the other hand when there is this tiny little person growing inside you, money suddenly seems the least of the worry. All you know is you need a crib and it doesn’t so much matter how much it costs, you just want he or she to be safe.
There are two small portions of pregnancy I would repeat, the first being the initial ultrasound, if you thought the world spun after you saw the white plastic stick. It’s nothing next to the sound of a heartbeat filling the exam room you’re in, if it wasn’t real before… it is now. The second is a few months down the road yet, but kicking and movement, I loved those. For a scant amount of time, she was only mine. She danced in my belly to Maroon 5 (yes, I’m serious), would headbutt my hand while I watched tv and sort of calmly swim about when I was lying in bed. For the entire length of my pregnancy, only my husband ever felt her move, she did it for no one but us.
8 months, a week in the NICU and seven more weeks saw us being working parents, trading shifts of who had our daughter, sending her to grandparents while we worked the weekends and still it seems like we missed nothing. We were there for the rolling over, the sitting up, the first tooth, every doctors visit, first steps, smiles, laughs, each moment sending a giddy rush of adrenaline when she does something new.
Now, at 19 months old, she’s wrecking the house, running, laughing, has a full set of teeth, completely soaks the bathroom at bathtime, chases the cats, turns off the Playstation, empties the shelves of DVDs, grows out of clothes faster than they can be bought but it’s still a breathtaking experience to watch her. She learns shapes, words, hand gestures, gives hugs and kisses, she dances happily, sings scales with her Daddy, waves hello to every friendly face, loves the zoo, lights up when she sees any of her grandparents, and that barely scratches the surface of the new things she does every other day.
So while yes, parenting can be exhausting, it’s a job I’d never trade. It’s always just a little bit more fun than it is work and from pink lines to birth, from the first day home to her first birthday and for every little thing new she’s done since then, I see miraculous beauty (though it is sometimes smeared with peanut butter).
