So it hit me the other day. I was just going about my usual business; singing a song about poop while I struggled to strap a clean diaper on my child who was trying desperately to roll away from me, and I realized: I am somebody's wife. And I have a child. When did I suddenly become a grown up?
It seems like just yesterday I was rescuing the bird I saw get hit by a car with my best friend who lived across the street in the dead of night without my parents' knowledge (the dead of night back then was 8:30 pm). But then not long after that I was in high school thinking how crazy it was I could drive, and before I knew it I was graduating and then struggling through my 5000 level college classes so I could graduate from the U. What the? Somewhere in there I met a pretty awesome guy and got married and now 3.5 years later we have a kid? Nobody ever told me how time seems to go by exponentially faster with every year and every life event. But I will say, the craziest experience so far for me has been motherhood.
When Al and I first found out we were having a baby neither of us believed it at first. In fact, I was just taking a pregnancy test for fun in an attempt to (jokingly) freak Ali out, but then the test came back positive. Al didn't believe it and tried to say the test was faulty at first (I had bought a pack of about 30 from amazon for like $8, so he didn't really believe they were legit tests), so he decided to take one as well to prove it. Well, thankfully, his prego test came back negative, and after taking three more we had to accept that we were going to be parents.
Obviously we didn't grasp exactly what being parents would entail until nine months later when little Lyla Ann came into the world. For me, the initial adjustment was much harder than expected. I remember when I got home from the hospital thinking I would never sleep again. And then people kept wanting to visit and all I wanted to do was sleep and ice my crotch (maybe tmi?) and figure out how to keep my child fed through the excruciating pain of nursing, which is not something you want the general public to see anyway. By the way, because of this I vowed to never visit anyone but immediate family within two weeks of child birth, you are welcome new parents.
Anyway, the point to all of this is that I adjusted just fine and now all of the sudden I have an eight month old, and I am doing my dream job of staying at home with my baby girl. It is the hardest and most worthwhile thing I've ever done and it is going by way too fast. Some days I get pooped on. Some days I get mushy, slobbery food spit into my face. Some days I realize it is 4:00 and I haven't even gotten dressed yet and I couldn't tell you what I've done all day. Sometimes I realize that I have lost all shame when I find myself at the grocery store with greasy hair, no make up, wearing flip flops with socks, sweat pants, and a dirty t-shirt. Some days I wonder how in the world people make it with more than one kid, and laugh at myself when I realize that this will seem like a piece of cake when we have another kid. But when I see Lyla learn something new, or when she wants to come to me and no one else, when she manically runs around laughing in her "poop chair" (more on that to come), it makes me happier than I've ever been.
Sorry for the cheese.
