My baby will be eight months this week. It has recently hit me how quickly this is going. Eight months sounds so much older to me. It is only four short months from his first birthday. It makes me a little sad.
And at the same time I feel so blessed and happy. Each new month brings along a new milestone. Something new learned and understood by this little boy. He is changing and growing and I can't stop it. I can only embrace it and cherish these moments and memories and keep trying to do my best at being his mama. I will teach you things every day, my little Finn. I will dance with you and stack blocks for you to knock down and I will make you laugh by hiding behind the kitchen wall and jumping out just scary enough to make you giggle. I will come to you in the middle of the night when you wake from a bad dream or from your teeth aching or just because you need reassurance that I am here. I will rock you in your cozy, dark room and nurse you until you have fallen back asleep and I will place you in your crib with your blankets and your wink the owl. I will take you for longer walks when the winter breaks and we'll look at the daffodils blooming on the hill and we will throw stale bread to the ducks on Lake Newport. I will chase you and run with you and let you explore.
I keep telling my boy that soon we won't have to get bundled up into our snowsuits and hats and blankets to take a short walk down our street. Soon we will be able to just walk outside. I keep reminding him of the hot months when he was just a new baby and how they will be here soon. I miss the sun. But I have my very own sun with me everyday.
I am wishing and wanting spring to be here so badly. And I am wishing and wanting summer to be here. But I also know that wanting these summer months inevitably is wanting the month that will turn my baby into a one year old. These gray winter clouds are temporary but so is my eight month old baby. He is changing and growing. I can't make it slow down. It is my joy watching him grow and it is also that small pit in the bottom of my stomach that my baby one day soon will turn into a toddler.
I read a short story by one of my favorite authors about her daughter growing. She compared it to a time her and her husband went to eat at a restaurant in china town in Manhattan. The place was in an abandoned building and the waiters could hardly speak English and without knowing what they ordered the waiter brought a dish out that was the author's favorite thing she has ever eaten. When they finished the dish he brought another one. When they finished that one he brought another. She kept thinking how can it get any better than the last one? How can it possibly get better? She compared it to her daughter growing. The waiter kept saying "more, more" and it kept getting better and better.
