Day 4: This Baby
This one.
She is a freaking delight. Sometimes I think back on how hard those first 3-6 months were and I'm just amazed at how easy we've got it now. She's full of laughs and giggles and hugs and the best part: she sleeps!
Of course, I write that and then this morning she threw a fit, so. She seems to be teething or just going through some toddler shit. Honestly, I'm surprised by how much stuff I just kinda shrug and go idk about after having this kid for more than a year. But until she can use words and tell us what's wrong, sometimes we can't figure out the screaming and we just have to watch the Happy Baby video for the 100th time.
Sometimes I'm really glad I decided to take a day off each week to spend home with her and sometimes I long for 5 days/week of daycare. But I do like this balance. She forces me to slow down, at least for a day, and examine the world anew. And then the other 6 days of the week I continue doing everything at 2x.
She's just. Ugh. So good. I understand now those people whose FB feeds would fill up with photo after photo after photo of their baby, each only subtly different. I do the same, I just try to keep it to flickr. I like to just watch her play, see her concentrating as she figures out her toys and learns to do new things.
But boy is it hard to remember she's a growing, changing human being. I keep underestimating her, at my peril. I keep looking at her and marveling at the things she's been able to do for months and missing that she is literally learning new shit right before my eyes. She understands way more than she lets on, she can do more than I let her, and yet - yet she really is still just a baby.
I'm also endlessly proud of everything she can do, and even more proud (prouder?) of how she just keeps doing. When she was practicing how to walk, she'd use the coffee table to stand, let go, take a step, fall, laugh, and go right back and try again. Man, how did we all lose that effortless ability to try and try and try and laugh at our failures? Honestly babies should be the motivational speakers, because they start from literally nothing and become functional human beings. The sheer number of things they have to learn and master in the interim boggles my mind.
Yet she'll do it. She's doing it.
And I hope she never stops. <3