In the Still of the Night

Day 12 of the "Blog Every Day in May" challenge:

"What do you miss?"

It's 2:20 a.m. on a Tuesday night as I sit in the dark cool nursery, wrapped in a fleece blanket, snuggling a tired and scared baby boy and write this post in my head.  He had a nightmare, I think.  Another one.  They're getting more and more frequent.  He wakes up scared and confused and disoriented.  Sometimes he doesn't even open his eyes, he just sits up in his crib and screams.  When I open the door, he can sense my presence and for a minute, he gets absolutely hysterical.  He reaches for me, grasping the air, grabbing handfuls of my shirt, my hair, my necklace.  He pulls himself into my chest as hard as he can and buries his face in my neck.  Sometimes the sobbing stops instantly.  Sometimes it takes a few deep breaths, maybe some bouncing, sometimes he needs to hear my voice as I hold him tight and whisper "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" into his ear.  He calms.  It breaks my heart to think that he was scared and alone in the dark for even just a few minutes.  But I'm here now.  I'm all he needs.  I'm his touchstone, his safe haven, his mama.  I exist to make it all better.  In a few years I'll be ridding his closet of monsters and battling the boogie man that lives under his bed.  But for now, all he needs is me.  My touch, my warmth, my voice.  I have mama magic.

I move to the rocking chair and wrap the two of us in a soft warm blanket.  He lays his head in the crook of my arm and looks up at me, making sure I'm still there.  It's dark, but I can just make out the features of his face by the soft glow of the nightlight.  I smile and give him a soft warm kiss on his cool forehead.  He closes his eyes and buries his face in my neck.  I take a deep breath and take in his scent as he takes in mine.  We rock, our bodies pressed as close together as we can get so we can feel each other's heartbeat.  He fits so perfectly against me, curled in all the right places, like two perfectly matched puzzle pieces.  We were made for each other.  And we rock.  I notice that he's getting longer every day and his feet now stick off my lap beyond my knees. His little arms wrap up around my neck and my arms stretch all the way around him to envelope him, like a mommy octopus.  And we rock.  Back  and forth in the moonlight.  Listening to the sound of the rain from his white noise machine and taking in the stillness of the room.  Everyone else in the house is fast asleep, it's just us awake.  We're the only people in the whole world.  And we rock.  After a few minutes he relaxes and gently, gradually lets go.  I loosen my embrace around him and let him slide down into my arms into his usual cradle position.  His feet stop moving, his hands unclench and he starts snoring ever so slightly.  And we rock.  

As gently and nimbly as I can, I get him moved to his crib and in his favorite sleeping position, face down, butt up, arms and legs curled in tight.  I pat him on the back a few times and say a prayer in my mind over his sleeping body.  I sneak out of the room and back into my own bed.  My sheets are cool, but I can still feel the warm spot on my chest where his cheek was resting a few minutes ago.  I wrap the blankets around me and try to drift off to sleep for the third time this night.  We'll probably do this all again in an hour or two.  It's going to be a long night, followed by an early morning.

I miss sleep.  But in the meantime, I'm not missing a moment.

10 Words

Day 11 of the "Blog Every Day in May" challenge:

"Sell yourself in 10 words or less..."

Well, this has to be one of the weakest, stupidest, lamest topics of the month.  Ugh.  But I'm trying to play by the rules, so here goes noting.  This is how truly awesome I am...

Fall From Grace

Day 10 of the "Blog Every Day in May" challenge:

"Most embarrassing moment..."

Geez, there are so many horribly embarrassing stories to choose from, but this one jumps out as pretty mortifying.  OK.  Picture this, I'm an eager-beaver law student, half-way through my first year of law school and going on my VERY FIRST call-back interview for a major law firm here in St. Louis.  My grades were good first semester, which is how I score this nearly unheard of opportunity to be interviewing for a summer associate position after my first year!    This would be great money, a great opportunity and possibly lead to a full-time position after graduation   Needless to say, I was pumped.  

I was dressed in my brand new Ann Taylor plain-ass boring black skirt suit with a plain white button-up, plain black patent leather pumps and pantyhose (standard law student interview attire).   I was excited and nervous, but handling myself with confidence, as I was told to do.  The way law firm interviews work is you start off with HR, then move around the firm to the offices of a few different attorneys, getting the tour of the place as you go.  I think I had four attorney interviews that day.  The first one was going well.  I felt like I was hitting it off with the attorney and felt comfortable.  I liked the firm.  I had a reign on my nerves. At the end of the 20 minutes it was time to move on to the next office.  One down, three to go.  

The next interview was one floor down.  We took the internal staircase that the lawyers use that lead down a flight into the firm library.  I was looking around, taking it all in, trying to maintain eye contact with my interviewer/tour guide, trying to appear impressed, but not overly so.  I'm sure you can all see where this is going.  With about 6 steps left, I lost my footing and tumbled down, down, down to the bottom of the stairs.  In the middle of the library.  With a bunch of attorneys watching me.  Cringing.

I fell pretty hard.  It hurt.  I was freaked out.  I didn't know what to do.  So I stood up quickly, brushed my hair out of my face, stuck my arms out, smiled and said, "TAA DAA!"  And bowed.  

No one laughed.  No one cracked a smile.  Three people ran up to me to make sure I was ok.  They made me sit down and brought me a glass of water.  The found my shoes, which went flying off my feet during my fall from grace and the folder of resumes and references I was holding.  Thank God I didn't impale myself with the pen in my hand.  I'm sure they were terrified that I was going to sue or something.  I was MORTIFIED.

After a few minutes of trying to laugh it off and let everyone know I was ok (which I wasn't), they took me to the next interview.  Both the knees of my pantyhose were ripped open.  I was a dishelved wreck.  I had to tell the story of what happened three more times to everyone I saw to explain my appearance.  My nerves were SHOT.  The rest of the interviews sucked.  I left as fast as I could and spent 30 minutes in my car bawling, praying that I would never ever ever ever see any of those attorneys again.  That firm would be checked off my list of potential jobs.  

Needless to say, I didn't get an offer from them.  :)  I can't say that I wasn't surprised.

The next year, I didn't even apply to interview at that firm.  I just couldn't face them.  Everyone assured me that I was overreacting and that there was no way anyone would remember that a year later.  

Until a friend of mine interviewed there and her interviewer made her take the elevator down 1 level and said (with annoyance in his voice), "I'd take you down the internal staircase, but some girl fell down a whole flight of stairs last year and we've been instructed to use the elevator from now on."  Of course, she piped up with, "that was my friend Sara!"  

And my legend lives on.

He's a Keeper

Day 9 of the "Blog Every Day in May" challenge:

"A moment in your day..."

There are so many moments in my day that are precious.  Any time spent with my baby is my favorite part of the day: watching him grow, watching him learn, watching him become the tiny little person that he is.  As parents, it's our job to shape his life, to teach him, to encourage him, to support him.  Along the way, until he develops interests of his own, we get to share our hobbies and interests with him. One of the things Ryan and I are looking forward to most is being able to share our love of the outdoors with Mac.  He already loves being outside, so I think it's going to be an easy plug.  

Ryan's also convinced that Mac's going to be an amazing fly fisherman, so he's getting him started early.  Every year at the end of May, we go on a tarpon fishing trip.  As soon as the weather starts getting nice, Ryan pulls out the big fly rod and starts practicing his casting up and down our street.  This year, he got to show Mac how it's done.  Mac was in my arms watching, just fascinated for a while, but the draw of the fly line just got to be too much and he needed to get down and practice with daddy.  Just sitting back on the curb and watching these two interact was such a magical moment.  Mac is so incredibly lucky to have Ryan as a father.  These two are destined to be the best of friends.  I see many many fishing trips in their future.  Perhaps I'm biased, but I think Mac's going to be a natural!

My Heartfelt Advice

Day 8 of the "Blog Every Day in May" challenge:

"A piece of advice you have for others..."

Good gracious, this is tough topic.  I went back and forth about what advice I wanted to give you.  As I mentioned a few days ago, it's a little weird giving you guys advice when I feel so unqualified.  However, there is one piece of advice that I love to give to anyone and everyone that will listen, regarding anything and everything they do.  A universal truth that applies to life, but is especially important in the life of a child:

TAKE MORE PHOTOS!

You all know that I'm crazy about photography.  I'm addicted.  I can't help myself.  I've had a camera in my hands for as long as I could remember.  But never in my life have I taken more photos (or more significant photos) than I have this past year of my child.  I think taking photos of his childhood (babyhood?) is one of the most important things I can do for him (and me).  It's a way to preserve his tiny baby perfection.  It's documenting our life and solidifying our memories.  It's capturing those oh-so-important moments with the love of our life that we'll never be able to get back.

We all know how quickly the time goes by and how fast our little ones grow up.  As much as I try to live in the moment, I know there are a lot of moments I'm going to forget.  I want to remember the way he looks when he sleeps, the expression on his face when he sees the cat, the way he tries to use sign language, his surprise face, the zombie-like walking he does.  Not to mention all the little every day details that I want ingrained in my memory: the curl in his hair over his ear, the size of his feet, the dirt on his fingers, the length of his eyelashes, the fullness of his lips, the color of his eyes, the tip of his nose.  

They're not super little for very long.  Most of that time is spent by us in a constant state of sleep deprivation, worrying and surging hormones.  Luckily, we tend to quickly get over just how hard those first few days weeks months were.  If I didn't have a hundred photos of that time in Mac's life, I'm not sure how much (if any) I'd remember.  And as big of a pain in the ass it was to get out the camera and tempt waking a sleeping baby, it's so worth it.

Even after the new baby smell wears off, time just doesn't seem to slow down.  The milestones come one after another, fast and furious.  The memories of those little achievements are replaced with the next big thing.  Rolling turns to crawling turns to walking turns to running.  "Dadadadada" turns into "Dad, can I borrow the car?"  The moments fly by in the blink of an eye.

I try to have my camera out, fully charged and ready to go so I can grab it at a moment's notice.  Of course I always have it with me for the big moments, the vacations, the sporting events, the trips.  But I also want to make sure I capture photos of Mac just doing what he does - playing with the pots and pans, chasing the dogs, devouring pasta, emptying the laundry basket, climbing the stairs, getting a diaper change, throwing a ball, playing with the remote, knocking over the trashcan, eating sticks.   Some days I'll take 400 photos and some days I might take 4.  Sometimes I will go an entire week without taking a single photo and am shocked when I go back to see how much he's changed in that one little week.  Missed opportunities.  Don't put it off until tomorrow, because he'll never again be as little as he is today.

So my advice to you - get your camera out (I mean your real camera, not just your iPhone), clear your memory cards and get snapping!  Get pictures of all those little details and moments in your day that you just KNOW you'll never forget, because sometimes...you forget.  Take hundreds of pictures, just to keep a couple of the best.  They don't all have to be perfect.  He doesn't have to be smiling or even looking at you.  And If you're worried that your photos aren't as good as everyone else's - don't be.  Your child is never going to look back on photos of himself as a baby and say, "I wish my baby photos looked like s0-and-so's photos."  No, he's going to say, "Look how little I was.  Look how young and pretty you were, mom. Look at dad's hair!" And if you're concerned, just know that practice and experimenting are the best ways to get better at photography.  Your skills will improve with each photo you take and you'll have those pictures of your little one to always look back on.  That's a win-win, my friend. 

Be Afraid...Be Very Afraid

Day 7 of the "Blog Every Day in May" challenge:

"The things you're most afraid of..."

Well, I've made it a whole week in this challenge.  Are you getting sick of me yet?  This blogging every day thing has proven to much much harder (hence the "challenge" description) than I thought it would.  There just doesn't seem to be enough time in the day to really craft a well-written, thoughtful post for each prompt.  I'd love to use today's topic to really get into depth about what scares me about being a parent.  What I worry about.  What I'm most afraid of.  But alas, that shall have to wait for another day.  I'm sure my fears are the same as most parents out there, nothing drastically different.  So today I'll give you a little glimpse into some other things that scare me (warning: my mind is a weird place).

- SIDS 

- Losing my husband

- Getting fired

- Hurting someone

- The fact that I may not get to sleep through the night for the rest of my life

- E.T.

- The ocean at night

- Making the same mistakes my parents made

- Having a daughter who makes the same mistakes I made

- Motorcycles

- Missing a big deadline

- Sinkholes

- Clowns

- Rejection

- Being wrong

- Kidnappers

- Being hit in the face with a baseball at a game

- "Reply To All"

- Head lice

- My student loan debt

- Being bitten by a rabid squirrel

- Running out of vodka

- A snake in the toilet

- Failure

- Voldemort

And what about you...what are you scared of?  

What I Do

Day 6 of the "Blog Every Day in May" challenge:

"If you couldn't answer with your job, how would you answer the question 'what do you do'?"

It's funny, if you actually did ask me that question, I probably wouldn't answer with my job anyway.  While my job is something I do, it's not who I am.  What I am and what I do right now is be a MOM.

I worry about my child 24/7.  Whether he's developing at the right pace, whether he's smart, whether's he's eating enough, whether he's safe, whether he's happy.  

I am there for him.  Through the long sleepless nights, the bumps/bruises, the snot, the poop, the drool, the milestones and all the uneventful moments of just being.

I nurture his curiosity.  By reading to him, by talking to him, by singing to him, by playing with him, by being by his side as he explores. 

I provide for him.  I give him clothes, toys, sustenance, attention, affection, adoration, a home where he's safe, a family full of people that love him. 

I document his life.  I take photos, I write letters, I keep mementos, all so he knows where he came from and that we think ever single moment with him is special.

I create memories for him.  I provide entertainment and activities, plan vacations and trips, give him experiences and outings and adventures.

I exist.  To make him happy, to make sure he's safe, to teach him to be a good person, to kiss his ouchies and make it all better. 

I am his quiet.  He is my wild.

I love him.  Unconditionally.  With all my heart and soul.  I am his mama.

Profess Your Love

Day 5 of the "Blog Every Day in May" challenge:

"Publicly profess your love and devotion for one of your blogger friends. What makes them great? Why do you love them?"

I'm pretty excited about today's topic because this is something I've been wanting to say for a while now.  I have been truly blessed with an amazing friend named Ally.  She is one of the kindest, most generous, loving, thoughtful, courageous, funny, smart, beautiful, adventurous people I've had the pleasure to know.  I am so lucky to have her in my life.

If you read Ally's blog you might know some things about her: she loves musicals and Hugh Jackman, London and Princess Kate, yoga and dance, running and races, pretty dresses and the color pink, her friends and family.  But what you might not realize until you meet her and spend some time with her is that she has an old soul, she makes friends everywhere she goes, she has a weak spot for babies and dogs, she believes in wishes and fairy tales come true, she has the loudest, most wonderful laugh that can fill an entire room, she wears her heart on her pretty pink ruffled sleeve, she can drink wine out of a Twizzler straw like a boss, she has a Texas twang with a laid-back California attitude, she's generous to the point of giving you the Burberry coat off her own back to make sure you're warm.  And this is just the tip of the iceberg as to why I love her.

This past year she's gone through some stuff...serious stuff that's broken her heart and changed her life.  Stuff that has tested her faith and her friendships.  And, in my opinion, she's handled it all with more grace, patience and humility than most people I know ever could have done.  She's come out on the other side with a smile and a renewed sense of purpose.  She's finding herself. She's so brave.  She is so strong.

And despite whatever she might be personally going through, she's always there when needed, to take a phone call or answer a text, to send a photo of a handsome freckled stud, just to listen or to provide some encouragement and support.  She's shared her heart and her home with me and my child.  She loves with every fiber of her being.  She's a true friend in every sense of the word.  

So this, my dear Ally, is my public profession of love and devotion to you.  Thank you for being my friend.