Time Flies When You're Having Fun [Being a Mom]

My baby is now six months old. SIX MONTHS! Half a YEAR. I really have no comprehensible way to explain how this could possibly be true...but it is. I mean, I JUST had a baby. Seriously, at work there are still people I will meet and they will refer to me as "Oh, you're the one who just had a baby, right?" Right! At least, it seems like it is still news!

I was talking to a good friend of mine the other day who also had a baby about 5 months ago. We were comiserating about the "time flies" factor that a baby implements into your life and I liked her perspective.

She said, when her baby was first born and she would see a mom with a 6 or 8 or 9 month baby she would think to herself "Oh, ok, that mom has an older baby - she's a pro - she has it together...so I'll know what I'm doing by then too!"

Now, when she sees a mom with a newborn, still so itty-bitty and sweet, she thinks "I hope this new mom doesn't look at me and think I'm a pro!"

Haha! So true!

I was one of those lucky ones who had a wonderfully uneventful and enjoyable pregnancy - so it seemed to go pretty quickly (sans the last 3 weeks which dragged on and on with painful anticipation!) The first month with Matilda was a whirlwind - she was BRAND NEW and I was still healing and reeling from the most traumatic surgery my body had ever experienced (whoa, they aren't kidding around when they hand you those pain killers!) Just a few short weeks after her birth there came Thanksgiving...then Christmas and New Years shortly followed and before I knew it my maternity leave was up and I was choking back tears as I started back at work.

That three months was the most magical three months of my life and I can't tell you how fast it went by - seriously, it felt like a matter of days. Now, three more months down the road...I am fully in the swing of balancing life as a "working mom" and have yet to master the routine of which days to get the laundry done, how to pack our lunches and get the dishes done before surrendering myself in front of the tv for the evening, let alone try and get Matilda into a sort of workable schedule. We do what we can - things eventually DO get done (mostly thanks to the patience and perseverance of my live-in saint...er, I mean, my husband) and the days go by (all to quickly) without too much of a mess left in the wake (key words here being "too much").

All that to say, while I have absolutely cherished each and every day as a mother - how do I get time to slow down for me? It is just going by too fast! This IS what everyone tells you will happen. I can't tell you how many times parents told me to "enjoy every minute - it goes by fast" - indeed, that is a remarkable understatement. It also saddens me to hear parents say "Gosh, I can't even remember my daughter/son being that small, those memories are just a blur!"

Oh no! Is that true - do you really forget this time in life?

How do I lock away these tiny moments in my head for good? I will look down at Matilda and study her little face, her little idiosyncracies, trying to store them in the vault of my mind forever.

"Don't forget the way she smirks at you in the morning! Don't forget how she snorts when she laughs! Don't forget how she gazes up at you with utter contentment when she's nursing!" It nearly gets me teary just thinking about those precious memories slipping away.

It also makes me wonder what beautiful memories have already slipped through the cracks in my head. It's so strange to me how we can't force ourselves to remember (or unremember for that matter) certain things in our life. I'll definitely be asking God about that when I get to heaven. Until then, I'll have to settle for photos and video to do the remembering for me. I'll have to look back on this blog years from now and get out the tissues as I reminisce.

All I can do is continue to be thankful for each minute as it ticks by...counting the moments (the blessings) with my sweet Matilda as she grows and changes right before my eyes.

Some people don't believe in time travel. I say, those people must not have children.