Life as I know it........

Changed – is the first word that comes to mind if I could describe my life over the past three years. Exciting, happy, eventful, elated, overwhelming, frustrating, tiring, exhausting, giddy are other words that come to mind. Finding time to put my thoughts to words has definitely been hard to come by.

From being a single girl I became a fiancée, wife, sister-in-law, aunty and most recently – mother! In August 2008, this amazing guy in my life asked me to marry him and share our lives. My best friend is now my husband and life just took on a whole new dimension. I suddenly had a whole new set of people related to me by marriage. Between trips to Bali for the honeymoon, visiting the new-born nephew, driving around wine country in Central California to spending Christmas breaks with the family it sure has been a packed three years.

But the most significant life-changer came along last September in the form of my son. He has made me a baby-talk spewing, worried, tearful at times, pulling my hair out other times trying to figure out why he is crying, to a grinning from ear-to-ear mess that I am these days. From when I found out I was pregnant, I just couldn’t wait 9 months to meet this little creation. Seeing him in ultrasound pictures was one thing but holding him in my hands when he was born was beyond elating and emotional. Nothing could have prepared me for just how much life was going to change.

24 hours in a day were just not enough to keep up with his eating/sleeping habits. I wish there was a way to bottle up sleep and use it on demand. If someone comes up with something similar to a sleep battery, they surely can make a fortune. The feeling of exhaustion was constant with the 2-3 hour feeding/diaper changing that seemed never ending and sleep was always so far away even though I needed it so much! I said goodbye to getting 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep at night. I am sure it was a big adjustment for him too, just being in the world, dealing with a sleep-deprived mom/dad, learning to gauge our body language and voice tone. It is all a big blur although I made sure to take as many pictures of his ever changing face as I possibly could.

After a year of being around him, I think he understands me better than I do him. He is so responsive to every word, every action we share with him, soaks everything up like a sponge. He has gone from lying quietly in one place smiling sweetly, to turning on his tummy, pushing forward, sitting up, crawling and walking! Babbling incessantly adds to his adorableness. He talks like he is actually making sense and holding a conversation with us. He cocks his head to one side and babbles something when he hands some tiny piece of lint he picked off the carpet like “look, I found this and I am giving this as a gift to you!!”. It makes my heart just swell with emotion I cannot even begin to describe. It is this feeling of amazement and happiness like I cannot believe he actually chose us to be his parents.

Over the past week or two, his learning and understanding of what we actually say has exponentially increased. He can actually understand when I say “Where is your nose/ear/tummy?” or “Let’s clean up” or “Diaper change!!”. How can I tear myself away from him every morning when I come to work? Definitely isn’t easy for sure. Leaving the most precious thing in your life in someone else’s care is very hard to do and we are lucky to have found someone who takes good care of him.

Gone are those days where I would spend hours surfing the net or working on a painting or reading a book, meeting the girls for coffee on Saturday evening. Catching up or meeting people who I used to constantly correspond with or see is hard to come by these days. I am trying to make an effort and pray my friends are patient with me.

The best part of my day is when he is standing at the top of the stairs when I get home, with that BIG grin on his face, with outstretched hands through the safety gate. I get a hug and a kiss too these days which makes the rest of the day a blur =)