You're Gonna Miss This

I'm sitting in a chair, currently unattached to my child.  I think to myself, "I don't know how long this will last, so I should do something....." which leads me to another thought. I really don't know how long this will last, but it's going by so fast.

She is currently shrieking.  That's her new mode of communication.  She's in her "rocking entertainer" which is a thing that holds her up in a little seat that turns all the way around, and there are things to her to bang on.  I take comfort in the fact that her feet don't reach the bottom of it [yet]. She is playing without having to have me right there. Miss Independent, she is.

She doesn't need me to hold her head up.  I don't have to nurse her every hour, she sleeps most of the night [although a nice nap would be nice, too], and she is increasingly aware of her environment.  Pretty soon she'll be rolling over, sitting up, and eating sweet potatoes.

I'm going to miss her clinging to me.  I won't miss or even remember having dirty dishes and dusty corners, but I will miss all of the times I've had to stop doing household chores because she needed to be held. 

I'm going to miss her lack of mobility when she crawls and then runs away from me.  I'm going to miss the grunts, raspberries, and loud shrieks when she starts sounding our syllables and asking for a drink of water.

I'm going to miss spraying and washing her diapers on the day that we go pick out her first big girl panties.  In the midst of the potty training struggles that will come, I hope I remember how much I really do love cloth diapering.

I'm going to miss her waking me up sometimes every two or three hours at night because she needs a little snack or just to feel my skin against hers.  The tired eyes I see every morning in the mirror will always be there, but for different reasons.

Cleaning and scrubbing can wait til tomorrow
for babies grow up, we've learned to our sorrow.
So settle down cobwebs, dust go to sleep.
I'm rocking my baby, and babies don't keep.