E turned 7 months old beginning of this month! Wow. It's surreal, because I've been here every day and kissed her face every day, but somehow I feel like surely someone's played a trick on me. It's impossible that all our baby friends are talking about the theme for their little ones' first birthday party. The weather is heating up and leaving winter (and the fleeting spring, for that matter) in the dust. The snow. No, the dust is a better analogy, since there's a lot more dust here than snow. The weather warming up is really the first indicator to me that E is a lot older. She was born as the summer died, and now a new summer is blooming. Already.
I am madly in love with E, and as the number of things she's learning increases exponentially, I am having such a blast being her Mama. Something new every day, it seems. She's become so much more mobile and independent. I miss her being a tiny new baby, but truthfully I'm really looking forward to seeing her grow and mature. Just... not too fast. I'm afraid I'm going to miss something.
People have lately been doing something I was told nobody would care about after E's arrival. They've been turning to me and saying, "So how are YOU doing?" And they mean it. I don't know if it's like, "How are YOU doing as a non-gestational mom?" or "How are YOU doing with only working part-time?" or "How are YOU doing with all the attention being given to E?" or "How are YOU doing with T being at work all the time?" or what. But I want it known that I appreciate that all these people are sincere and genuinely care about my answer to their question.
I'm not really ever sure how to answer it. I don't particularly care to LIE, but it's better and simpler to just smile and say that I'm great. But it's complicated. I am great... but I'm also stressed, lonely, elated, joyful, depressed, eager, questioning, unsure, unmotivated, thrilled and driven to do my best by Ev. Every day.
Do I want to have that conversation with every single person who asks how I'm doing? Of course not. After all, life isn't particularly simply for anybody, right?
I strive to live in today, live in this hour, live in this fortieth minute that my precocious daughter is asleep in a row. Tomorrow I'll try and do the same thing, and the day after that.
And you know what? That's more than good enough.
Goodness, she's adorable!
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, it is hard to answer that "How are you doing?" question, because more often than not "fine" really doesn't begin to explain it.