New Rhythms

Jack has brought a new rhythm to life that we are both still figuring out together. Days and nights stream together like uninterrupted time... three hour block schedules form our day - running around between naps and car backseat feedings and trying to figure out unending baby puzzles is the new normal. Each day feels the same and yet different - it feels like he is growing up too fast and yet not at all. I am trying to savor every moment - every little cuddle and coo, wake-up stretches and little baby faces; every late night sleepy snuggle, sneezes, and songs.

Everyone says these days go by so fast and to soak them all in. I know it's true - I see my first class of preschoolers entering the teenage years and marching off to 7th grade this year; I see my instagram feed previously filled with babies now making their way to Kindergarten... these infant moments won't last forever, which is both glorious and heartbreaking all at once. I love this little guy so much, yet he has turned my world upside down in ways I never could've predicted. I am both exhausted and fulfilled; terrified and overjoyed.

I recently had lunch with two friends who I encouraged to explore the teaching program in Spain I did years ago, and it occurred to me how different life is for me now. They are twenty-three and heading off on their adventure... anticipation, excitement, dreams of travel to Portugal and the south of France... airbnb's and hostels and trains and Euro Life. Everyone told me those days would go by so quickly - to do it all while I still had time... What days don't fly by?! What time doesn't pass?! Life feels fleeting and overwhelming and everything is put into perspective when a little human enters the world.

One Month Later

Nobody can prepare you for what it's like having a newborn. Of course, I knew this going into it. All the years of studying child development combined with nannying other people's children cannot cover the time warp feeling of foggy living -- figuring out if it's day or night and begging your crying infant at 2am to tell you why he's upset. There's no amount of theory or research or experience that can change the every-changing puzzle of a baby.

It is a life of paradoxes - it is the greatest joy and the greatest fear; the deepest love and deepest feeling of loss; it's the greatest change and yet everything remains the same. Life is now lived in the push and pull of these opposites. I realize that even before he was born, these extremes were present - through my 20's, traveling, moving, dating, engagement, marriage... starting a family. The post-partum hormones bring all the emotions to the surface as if the reality of Life itself becomes too much to grip; the passage of time reeling past like a film strip of a movie; unstoppable, uncontrollable.

Has life always felt this fragile? Has time always passed at this pace?

It is in the early morning hours begging a wide-awake, screaming baby to fall back into his slumber that the question "Is this my forever?" runs through my head like a repetitious song lyric that I can't escape. But then I catch a glimpse of a moonlit shadow rocking on the crib wall, coaxing a little bundle side to side, and I think "I wouldn't mind if this is my forever." I will remember these hours with Mom Memory - forgetting the difficult and clinging to the beautiful. Those little blue eyes looking up at me, so trusting, so alert - untainted, innocent, in wonder with the world.

These moments feel sacred and I remember not to wish them away, even in the frustration and fury of "please just let me sleep." Our tiny little guy - only a month old - and even when I dream of him growing up, I just want him to stay this way forever.