last night, the squawky baby passed out on the boob less than a minute after latching. moments previous, i’d been forcing appendages into arm and leg holes of her jammies. i swear these jammies fit last week, but after beginning the long affair of snapping the right snaps together, it became painfully obvious that they were about three inches too short. and so we started over. jude wailed. i chose zip pajamas this time.
[note to new mamas: you can never have too many footie jammies or sleep sacks that zip instead of snap. sleep deprived people have no business snapping anything. ever.]
yes, so back to the sleeping part. it’s such a luxury to snuggle up with a real, live sleeping baby at night anymore, and so i exhaled quietly, and stared in wonder at my child. jude lay between h and me, and after a few moments, we began to wonder at her aloud.
it’s hard to believe, i said, that we don’t get the newborn jude back. that our time with newborn jude is over. and now we’ve got this squawker who really wants to crawl, who protests wildly with tribal dance moves when she realizes she’s not moving in any direction. this 20 pounder with no teeth and loads of drool. this version of jude will be gone soon too.
and then we got all weepy and silent. be present for this, i told myself. don’t miss this. you can’t take it with you.
so i stared some more, and sniffed my baby’s head. she still smells like the newborn jude sometimes. and when she is sound asleep, phantom nursing, she sounds and looks like she did the day she was born. except with more eyelashes. and bushier eyebrows. oh, and wearing clothes made for 18 month olds.
