Growth and Enjoyment

Weekly column
The last few days have found me gushing over my precious baby girl. Isabel is especially sweet lately and while I know that sounds a bit odd (was she not sweet before? Aren’t all babies sweet? How could you say such a thing?) I realize that something is changing with me that allows an even more pronounced enjoyment of my precious daughter.

Oh how I love sweet baby Isabel!

This past week, I’ve noticed how much my little girl is filling out – she is no longer the tiny, porcelain newborn figure of those first few weeks. She is still very small to be sure, but as she grows, she gets a bit more meat on her bones and my goodness I love to nibble her delicious cheeks.

Isabel has started to smile and this sight stops us all in our tracks. The other day, I was making some kind of noise that caught her attention. She laughed, just a bit, and all the boys came running at the sound.

“Look at this,” one boy called to his brothers, “come quick!”

I looked up from staring at the baby to find her five older brothers surrounding her, all of them beaming with delight at the sound of her delicate giggles.

What has changed, I wonder, as I repeatedly tell my girl (and anyone else in earshot) that she is a sweet, beautiful little gift from God. What has me even more in love than before? What’s with all this gushing?

One thing, of course, is that I’m getting a little sleep – longer stretches of sleep that help my brain feel happy. One recent night, Isabel slept almost five hours in a row and while this may have been a fluke (please, Lord, help this to last) I felt like the Queen of the World when I woke up the next morning.

A good night’s sleep can certainly help a person’s outlook on life, and it helps when dealing with everyday tasks like running a household and also thinking.

The first few weeks with a new baby involve so much deliberate existence. In those sleep-deprived days, I must remind myself not only to be calm and take deep breaths, but also to take a shower, switch over the laundry and do a mental run down of my daily checklist, including a proper and accurate headcount.

It’s ironic that these times of such drastic change – an entirely new person added to the mix, a new person to make sure you include on the way out the door – in this challenging season you are running on fumes and grace and the miraculous gift of caffeine.

And yet, this season is blessed and beautiful and I am so lucky to have this life. It is a season that, now that the first few challenging weeks are over, is all about luxurious bliss. It is filled with delicious cheeks and angelic coos, with all the overwhelming happiness that is adding another amazing heaven-sent creature to your midst.

The other night I was in bed reading a book about adolescence and while I could have been a bit overwhelmed at the dichotomy of our life – dealing with a newborn and a teenager, dear Lord, help! – I was struck by one sentence that I could barely reread to my husband.

“In the years while your child is at home,” I read, and I had to stop. While the children are here – the reality that we will not always be under one roof is something that right now, my heart cannot bear.

And it doesn’t have to.

These children are here, in my home, right now. It is a short season. The days are long, yes, but the years are short. I have turned a corner, and while I know not every moment will be perfect bliss all the time, I see the light at the end of this sleep-deprived tunnel. I am remembering, as Isabel grows just a bit, how precious, so very precious, are these years in the life of my family.