You have now so thoroughly taken over my life that I struggle to remember the time before you. This is probably a good thing. In the weeks after your birth, while marveling at your crumpled tinyness, the way your snorted and snuffled through the days, I also mourned the loss of sleep - how once I was able to sleep for 10 whole hours, waking only when the cat burrowed into the covers and curled himself into the crook of my leg. But gradually I accepted that this new reality, the one with you, does not contain ten hour stretches of sleep. I've moved on. Reframed my expectations. I've also accepted that my food will always be slightly cold and that, while I've never really been well groomed, clean clothes and brushed hair is the best I can hope for and some days even that is a pipe dream.
I knew I would love you, bub. But I don't think I knew how much more I would smile. Or that I have an extraordinary capacity to be ridiculously silly, if it'll make you laugh or keep you from crying. I didn't know that it's possible to be so bored I feel I might ossify while simultaneously feeling joy and wonderment at the very existence of you.
And while there are days when being home with you is hard - days where I count the minutes until your Dad gets home and where I pour myself wine at 4.55pm because waiting until 5pm seems far too long - I've also never felt so useful. Being the person you need - the person you want most of all - is this incredible honour, even though sometimes I want to shut myself in a cupboard in the basement just to give myself some timeout from the noise and touch and everything that is being a Mum.
I am managing, so far, to keep my anxieties in check. When we go to the indoor play area and you put everything in your mouth, I resist the urge to spray you with disinfectant. I didn't bat that child with a cold sore away from you when she asked if you'd like to play. I just gently moved you a few feet further back. And when you found the cat vomit before me and decided to eat it, I didn't give you ipecac or call poison control or euthanize the cat. So I think I'm doing pretty well, don't you?
Before you were born, I'd willfully ignored the fact that love this large comes with a side helping of terror. And now you're here and the terror has made its camp within me and I can make it work, I think. It's all worth the way when you first wake up you start talking before your eyes are fully open, and the way you think everything (the cat, my head, the toilet seat) is a drum and how you seem intent on determining the edibility of everything by eating everything (although actually if you want to start screening out the cat vomit and other gross or poisonous substances, that'd be fine). I love that your first word is Hi, and that you say it to everybody and manage to light up the grumpiest of faces. I love that you have fantastic taste in books and that you dance whenever there's a hint of music and that you're always so happy to see your Daddy. The terror is welcome because with it comes you, and I wouldn't be without even the screamiest second of you.
A year, a whole year, of you becoming you. Of me becoming a new version of me. Of us becoming us.
Now just learn to flipping sleep, OK?
