Sunshine and scribbles

Last year, as I waited for our baby to arrive, I found myself wandering - waddling really - around our home. I was great with child and it took much energy to move. You know how it goes.

It was the first time that I had actually been home during the day – and I mean really home – free from school, free from other duties. I had left my dears at American Family, and nesting had become part of my daily routine. I had traded in my dress pants and collared shirts for sweats (months later, I realized the emotional importance of actually dressing like a normal person every now and then, but that is another story).

I began anew.

Began an adjustment, of sorts. A new chapter, however cliché that may sound.

With anxiousness, I would frequent Morgan’s little room often. One of the very last purchases we made was a plush rocking chair and it gave the room the perfect, final touch. The ‘icing’, as it were.

The room had everything. It just needed a baby.

I needed my baby.

The last few days before he arrived, I arranged, and rearranged every little thing. Our bags were packed. The carseat was set neatly to the side of his room. Among other snacks, I had bought Milano’s for Jared and Tostitos for Tracy (my midwife). Diapers and wipes were stacked neatly on the dresser, the changing pad positioned just right. Morgan’s ‘going home’ outfit was folded neatly in his brown leather diaper bag I had bought earlier in the summer. It was all there, all carefully, contemplatively purchased and prepared.

How I longed to put those things to use. But all I could do was wait.

So, we did.

We waited. And waited.

I had planned Halloween 2008 to be Morgan’s first. He missed it. Spent it snug as an oversized bug in a little rug (or a womb).

And there wasn’t a thing I could do.

You see, babies come when they come. And we wait with tears, or with laughter. With sanity (rare) or with craziness overtaking us. We wait nonetheless.
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And then the moment arrives. Ours did. And our darling came much later and much bigger than we imagined. But he came!

I’m so glad he came.
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The other day, while passing by the baby section at the store, I found the exact little pumpkin shirt I had bought last year, only in a much bigger size. A perfect size for a growing boy nearing one year of age.

Today, he wore it.

And I spent some time pondering about the day he was born and the time that has passed inbetween.

I gently unfolded the tiny matching shirt that I had bought twelve months ago. The one that I had laundered and set out on the dresser last year to help remind the 'pregnant me' that my baby was coming and that patience was virtuous and ever-so necessary. In all things.

This year, I set it out to remind me again. Only now, to remind me of where we've been, what I have learned, and how far we've come since this time last year.

Seeing that little shirt brought such butterflies.