one-handed talents and time shifting.

It's amazing the things I've learned to do one-handed since becoming a mom. The cup of coffee sitting beside me was fully made one-handed - from cleaning the pot and grinding the beans, to grabbing the mug, pouring the coffee and doctoring it just right with creamer. Learning the counter-balance of baby-on-hip as you move through doorways or down halls was another learning curve - it only took one time of slamming my arm and Josie's poor little head knocking against the door jamb to teach me that lesson. As I sit here, the sweet weight of a sleeping little girl on my chest, and think of all the ways she has changed me in the last nine months I am overcome with emotion for this little being that I helped make. I never knew being a mom would suit me so well, I never knew that the little noises she makes with her mouth while she sleeps would sing sweetly in my ears, rather than disgust me as it does when adults make similar noises. Even her most give-me-attention cries don't grate in my ears (yet).
She has wrought great change in me. She has made me patient. She has made me giving. She has softened the hardest parts of me. She has given me motivation to reach for my dreams and make changes I never thought possible. She has given me perspective. And she has given me cause for lots of introspection.

One of the things I've been pondering upon lately is how time changes as our lives change. I was chatting with a girl in her freshman year in college and asking her how her Christmas was. She nodded, telling me it was good then stopped and said, "It went by really quickly though! Quicker than usual!" I just looked at her and said, "It'll never slow back down now, it'll just get quicker and quicker." How true is that though? I remember as a kid, and even as a teenager too, thinking that time went by so slowly! Once Christmas break arrived, I'd take naps every afternoon to try to make Christmas come quicker, and it still felt like it dragged on getting here. Now I find myself staying up later just watching Josie sleep; I don't want to miss anything! The days are flying by and she's growing so fast that I'll do anything to try to slow things down. It's funny how our perspective shifts like that, isn't it? You go from being a child to having a child, and time goes from standing still to days running together in a blur they're passing by so quickly - I can hardly keep track with what day it is.

I guess all of this is to say that Josie is teaching me how to live in the moment and enjoy the now for the beauty each second brings - not yearning for something in the future or even living in the past, pining for what was. This moment is precious. Her little mouth partially open as she sleeps, the smell of her sweet baby breath as she dreams and breathes, the contrast of her long, black eyelashes against her creamy skin and how they're so long they curl a little at the ends, the lines left on her face from my shirt as she shifts in her sleep to her other side, her little fingers and hands twitching as she slumbers, and that smile that fleetingly graces her sleeping face every once in a while. I could go on and on - this moment is beautiful and I am thankful for it even as I look forward to more and remember ones past. My daughter grows and I'll just grow with her, as mommas do, always in awe at the beautiful life with which I have been entrusted.