Beauty

Sometimes your beauty astounds me and catches me off guard. Boys aren’t supposed to be pretty, are they? Well, you are and it takes my breath away sometimes.

And when I see you do something new I get so excited for you and my eyes well with tears of pride.I’ve always been quite happy to hold his bottle and from day one he has let me. He seemed happy to not have to do hold it—thank God! But now he wants to be a big boy and he seemed so thrilled with himself. One handed no less. Show off!

He actually stole the fork right out of my hand. It was ok—he managed pretty well and he didn’t poke himself in the eye.

One of the great things about my job is that there is no place in our organization that I can’t go nor is there any place that I don’t work. Today I had to go to the newborn nursery and I saw a newborn baby boy that I KNEW looked exactly like my son did at birth. He had the same black, spiky hair. The similar eyes and nose shape. Only his mouth looked different. I couldn’t take my eyes from him. I felt so sad that I never got to see or hold my son when he was that small. And once again I was struck by the horrible decision his first mom was faced with. I just can’t even imagine leaving a child that small and innocent and hoping that the unknown was somehow better than my known. Sometimes I feel cheated that I didn’t have that time with him. My sister assures me it is boring (and I know it is because after a few minutes of holding my niece I’m ready to have fun with my son. She just doesn’t do anything!) and that she would have preferred to take the 12 week FMLA after her baby was 6 months when they are more interactive. I don’t disagree with her, but I wish I had some sort of witness to his early weeks and months. Someone that could share those memories with us. I wasn’t there to witness the first smile or giggle and the women that did can’t share that with me.

I do realize that I am blessed to have the next 17 years of smiles and giggles of which there are many. It is never far from my mind how close we came to never meeting. As my mom said just last week, I wouldn’t have known what I missed, but wow, I would have missed something and someone incredible.