I've been daydreaming.

I've been daydreaming a lot lately about Angelica being a big sister. (No, I'm not pregnant and not planning to be for quite some time!) Since I've been making strides at getting healthier, and we've been making some progress making a dent in the debt, it's easy to see a future that includes a sibling...it feels so close some days and so far away on others.

Now that we've got the behavior issues under control (mostly -- she is two, after all), I'm starting to see what a generous heart Angelica has. She's really starting to come out of her shell as a social being, and I love seeing her hug her friends and cousins and show concern for people's feelings. My nephew visited the other day and was in the worst mood ever, and she kept trying to hug him and make him laugh to no avail. (She then called him a grump, which made me giggle.)

She's also come around on baby dolls. For a long time she wouldn't really interact with them, but the other day she held one and gave it a "bottle" and sang rock a bye baby to it and it just made me smile so big.

I'm also loving that she has become a total mama's girl. For the first 2 1/2 years of her life, Daddy ruled her world, but for the past month or so, it's all mama, all the time. It's sad to see her push him away at times, but I truly cherish the moments when she crawls into my lap, or when she asks for my help, specifically, or the little inside jokes we now have together. Our bond is evolving from mama/baby to mother/daughter and it is one of the sweetest things I have ever known.

Another thing that's great -- she is a born leader. She insists on taking leadership roles in her classroom (so her daycare teacher says) and gets angry when she's denied...and fights for it (sometimes a little too hard). And yesterday, when my niece and nephew were visiting, we caught her trying to potty train my niece (who is nowhere near ready), and teach her how to wash her hands.

And, she really, really loves to help. She takes a lot of pride in doing things for us. I know that may be a passing phase, but it makes life so easy when I can ask her to get me something or pick something up or throw something away for me and she takes such delight in doing so.

One day, she's going to be a great big sister.

As for me, some things have come up lately that have made me reflect on my pregnancy with Angelica. As harrowing as it was at times, I have to admit that there is a lot that I miss about being pregnant. It truly was an amazing time...and though after Angelica's birth I swore I was never going to go through that ever, ever again...in hindsight it was so worth it. It's something you only get to experience a couple of times in life. It's something that I reflect on when I look at my otherwise "flawed" body, I am amazed that as imperfect as I consider it to be, it was able to create someone so amazing. And now I look forward to going through that again, someday, in the indeterminate future.

I'm so glad that I documented my pregnancy with Angelica so well too. It's amazing when I look back through the earliest posts on this blog, even if the words didn't match up I can still feel the joy that I felt when I was writing them. From the first post, to the second ultrasound (I started this blog after the first one was done), to the day we found out she was a girl, to the day I was put on restricted activity, to the day I went in for the induction...it was all amazing.

I really laugh hard when I read the post about our NT scan, which was done around 11 weeks, when Angelica was fighting back against the ultrasound wand, and giving the tech a hard time because her thumb was in her mouth and blocking a view she needed. Anyone who knows her now knows that she is a fighter and a BIG thumb sucker. I guess she was starting early! Actually, now that I think about it, anytime I had an ultrasound or doppler or NST, she would always move as far away from the wand or sensor as she could. She's always had a mind of her own, even before birth! In that post I also commented on how long her fingers looked...well, when she was born, people commented all the time on her long fingers! (Itty bitty feet though...she still only wears a 6 or 7 shoe, depending on the brand...couldn't even wear newborn shoes at birth!)

In hindsight it amazes me how incredibly naive, and maybe even pollyanna about the process, I was back then! I can't help but chuckle at my innocent perspectives on childbirth and the fact that I was trying so hard to not take everything seriously...)

When it is time for that second baby...I wonder, will I start a new blog? Will I continue on in this one, since so far, this has really been Angelica's story? I suppose those aren't decisions that need to be made now, since we won't be having another baby for at least a few more years. It's an adventure I'm really looking forward to having again. And, really looking forward to doing it again with a healthy body.

Reflecting On the Early Days

My sweet Angelica is now a walking, running, talking, screaming, squealing, chock-full-of-personality 13 month old, but as I've been getting some files organized on my computer, I've been looking over pictures from the early days. It's true what they say about the memory of a mother -- you always remember the good and forget the bad, and it the past is always tinted rose.

I am not a morning person by any stretch of the imagination. This was the hardest part of the early days for me. I am and have always been the kind of person who needs 8-10 hours of sleep each night in order to function. While friends and family bragged about their babies who slept through the night at six weeks, I was blessed with a baby who was still getting up at least once, if not twice a night at nine months old. Both SuperScott and I were perpetually exhausted and I was  frazzled beyond belief for months.

Today, though, we were feeding Angelica dinner and watching YouTube videos of kids cartoons with her, and I came across one that she and I watched together one of those early mornings when she had woken up at 4:45 in the morning and was ready to go for hours, and it felt like it was just yesterday that we were sitting there on the couch and I was singing the cartoon songs to her and tickling her little baby belly. Remembering that, a feeling washed over me...how much I miss those days! (And yes, I am one of those moms who lets her baby watch TV! Oh no!)

The Fourth of July was also one of these moments. Last year on the Fourth of July, I had a five week old baby Angelica, and we decided to brave a party at one of SuperScott's co-workers homes...when they did fireworks, I sat and cuddled with my little sleeping angel, covering her ears so that the fireworks wouldn't scare her (or hurt her eardrums). That day was also the first time she smiled a genuine smile at us, and I was lucky enough to be just snapping the shutter on my camera when she did it.

 

[caption id="attachment_214" align="aligncenter" width="225" caption="Fourth of July 2008"][/caption]

This year...cuddling? Forget it! This child wanted to run down and pick up still smoldering fireworks (or eat them) so it was spent chasing, holding, and  restraining her. I was so frazzled last year, worried that we were keeping the newborn up too late or breaking a schedule (HA! A schedule at 5 weeks? What was I thinking?).  This year we've got the schedule down to a science. But hey, despite all the screaming, chasing, struggling, and sticking to a rigid schedule (set by her, not us!) we still had a good time. By comparison, that 6 week old was a lot easier than our 13 month old. And oh, what a difference a year makes.

[caption id="attachment_215" align="aligncenter" width="214" caption="Fourth of July 2009"][/caption]

 

Now that we're in the land of sleeping through the night, from 8 p.m. - 8 a.m. (she might wake up earlier than that, but she sits in her crib and plays and hardly makes a peep) I find that we spend less time together. I miss the quality snuggle time we had those sleepy mornings at 4:00 or 5:00. It's very strange to me that I feel this way, considering how much I wished she would just sleep back then. It's so bittersweet, especially when you consider that there isn't the luxury of one-on-one time whenever you want it when you have the second baby, so you can never really go back.

Knowing this just makes me want to cherish each moment even more than I already do, because in a year I will probably be saying the same thing about this time in our lives as well.