My daughter is about 8 and a half months old. I rarely have time to really sit and write, but I’m going to try to save a bit of memory here.
I’m writing now on my way to work. I am still going to work twice a week, on Thursdays and Fridays. It’s getting very hard to work at home. I try to do 3 hours on Monday and 3 hours on Wednesday.
My daughter doesn’t nap much. I hear from other moms about these 2 hour naps or a 45 minutes nap being short and it sounds like some other world. I am not upset about it, it is what it is. I try to extend her naps sometimes… Nurse or rock or sing or stroll, hoping she’ll go back to sleep. But it’s just not her. Once she’s up, she thinks things are too interesting to miss. I noticed this about her several months ago and it hasn’t changed. Another mom that watched her for an afternoon confessed that she thought with her practice and success with her own daughter that surely she’d be able to extend my daughter’s nap when she was up after 20 minutes, and was surprised to learn she was wrong.
I think long naps just aren’t in my daughter’s nature right now and that’s ok. But it does mean those 3 hours of work I try to do at home must be with her mostly awake. And now she gets into things so easily. She’s a pro at crawling and she pulls up to standing. Sometimes she even let’s go with one or both hands. She takes some tumbles most days but jumps right back into trying after a brief cuddle and reassurance. She is fearless! Her propensity to explore her physical skills is much more like me than her father.
One day last week she stood on her own. It was a very wide stance. We were on the grass where there was a slight Hill, she was pushing up and the next thing I knew nothing was on the ground but her feet. I sort of stared at her dumbfounded and proud.
As we approach the marker of her time outside the womb equalling her time in it, I’ve also been reflecting on my own changes over this time. I gained around 45 pounds with the pregnancy. I was nervous about if I would return to my former shape, but also so happy to be a mom that I felt it would be worth it even if not, so I wasn’t stressing. I also felt that modelling healthy behavior was important. And with breastfeeding and the activity involved in caring for an infant in NYC, the pounds melted off, slowly but surely. I was able to fit into my pre-pregnancy jeans at about 7 months post-partum, and now I even need a belt for those. It’s so remarkable what the female body can do!
I’ve never been so happy for so long. I just adore this little girl, being a mom, watching my husband light up to see our daughter and hearing her giggle as they play together.
Life is beautiful.
A Cat Nap 