Month: June 2007

When I first became a mother, a surprising number of experienced parents and grandparents tole me that I should cherish this time because it goes by so quickly.

Sometimes I wanted to smack them.

Other times, they at least acknowledged that they knew it didn’t seem that way to me right then. How true that was! Right then, I was looking at the prospect of thousands of sleepless nights (or at least interrupted nights), eight to twelve feedings a day and a baby that, other than during those feeding times, didn’t seem to know who I was.

This was not, of course, how I’d imagined it. I imagined a cute and cuddly baby that would possess a calm assurance in the arms of his mother (laugh if you’d like, but I have friends who insist this is the case with their child). I wanted the sweet baby that only has eyes for his mother. Don’t get me wrong. Hayden was a very good baby. He didn’t cry very often (when he was born, the nurses had a difficult time extracting more than a whimper!). He nursed very well. He slept okay—not great, but not horribly.

But despite what everyone told me, these days were not going by fast. And every day wore on like the one before. Because of Ryan’s work schedule, we enjoyed three day weekends every week, but I spent a lot of my days and weeks counting down until the time Ryan would arrive home, or until the weekend. (Okay, I still do.) Every once in a while, I’d look back, amazed at how big my boy was getting or how much he’d developed. The months slipped away, but the days were molasses.

I just wanted him to hurry up and get to the phase where he’d sleep through the night, or walk, or not be teething anymore (we’re almost there), or be potty trained (ha!). Or, at the beginning, the phase where he would smile at me, or look at my eyes and see . . . anything or not fall asleep while nursing every single time he ate.

And then, suddenly, he was at each of those phases. To have my son smiling and seem to know who I was was so gratifying! He was the cutest baby with his drooly, toothless grin.

And then, just as suddenly, I’d realize he’d kept growing. The first time it hit me was when he cut his first tooth. I cried because my little baby was growing up. Yesterday I was contemplating cutting some of his hair, since it’s getting to be almost 3 inches long in places.

I mentioned it to my neighbor, whose youngest is a few months older than Hayden (and has had, I think, multiple hair cuts). She told me not to cut it, because when you do, “they grow up so fast.” I thought of all the little boys in the neighborhood with their tinymanhaircuts.

Maybe this phase goes by fast enough all by itself. I certainly don’t need to help it along. Maybe what people told me was right, after all.

Hayden isn’t old enough to give me the silent treatment. Instead, I think he’s giving me “the gibberish treatment.”

Yesterday at church, I was talking with one of my friends that watched Hayden while I was out of town. She said that Hayden had said a few things that really sounded like words—and even sentences!

• She went into the kitchen to make lunch and told Hayden to come along. He said, “I’m coming.”
• She told Hayden it was Caleb’s (her son’s) turn to play with something. Hayden said, “Turn?”
• She told Hayden to put the lid on his snacks and close them. He said, “Close it?”

I lamented to her that he never comes close to words when he’s jabbering at me. She smiled and said, “That’s ’cause you’re the mom—you’re supposed to know what he wants already!”

Strangely enough, I found this reassuring. The more I think about it, the more I like it. Over the last 16 months, I have come to know what Hayden likes and wants. He’s gradually finding ways to express it, too: he’s recent begun nodding and shaking his head. Not just randomly, but to communicate “yes” and “no.”

As I was buckling Hayden in his car seat today, and reassuring some of his whininess, when I suddenly realized, “Hey, I’m getting pretty good at this whole mom thing.”

It’s nice to have a smooth morning and that reassurance that I’m turning out okay as a mother, especially when Hayden’s got three teeth erupting ( 🙁 but at least he’s finally getting his last front teeth and molar) and just getting started in perfecting the fine art of tantrums.

I’ve mentioned before how hard it is to contemplate having another when you feel like you can barely handle this one, but the calm assurance that I really am doing okay does a lot to offset that—even if I really don’t know what Hayden wants.