Dear Sprout,

Over a month has passed since I last wrote to you, because I’ve been too busy taking care of you and trying to soak up every second. I had all these grand plans for this journal when I started writing in it, but the realities of parenthood are definitely nothing like my imaginings. I’d never imagined that I would clean so much poop off of so many places poop shouldn’t be, or how I would wrestle with you for hours to finally get you to sleep, only to collapse into my own bed instead of getting all the things done I should be doing.

I’m back at work now, and your daddy is getting a taste of how this one-on-one parenting thing goes. You’ve been kind of rough on him since I went back to work full time, to the point that he’s now talking about you being an only child. I hope he comes to his senses, not only because I know how lonely it can be to be an only child, but because it would be way too easy for me to pour so much love and adoration into you that you become a self-absorbed little monster.

Going back to work and leaving you has been hard on me, too, both physically and emotionally. I’m pretty much exhausted all of the time, and you’ve gone from peacefully sleeping through the night to reinstating the 2 AM feeding, as well as waking daddy promptly at 6:45, right after I go out the door, to eat and insist on being played with. The last day before I went back full-time, I sat and held you almost all morning and cried my eyes out. I know you’re in good hands with your daddy, but I miss you so much that my heart literally aches. Busyness at work has kept my mind off of it mostly, but I still wish so much that I could stay home and just be mother to you and wife to your daddy.

There’s a whole list of things I should probably be doing right now, but instead I’m sitting on your bedroom floor, writing to you and listening to the pleasant little sounds you make as you drift closer to sleep. I wish I could bottle your laughter and keep it with me forever to pull out when I’m feeling sad, an adorable little “hoo hoo” that along with your big eyes has me affectionately referring to you as my little owl. If only I could keep you this little forever, and stay here with you always.

Sprout's first shots

Dear Sprout, 

You had your first shots today, something that you will happily never remember and that mommy would love to forget. That had to be the hardest thing I’ve ever done, to hold you down while they jabbed you and you screamed and screamed. I’m not sure who cried harder afterward, me or you. But, after you nursed and fell asleep, you woke up for just a little bit as I put you in your carseat, and like the little trooper you are, flashed me a grin. You’ve slept and cuddled all evening, and I intend to let you do that all you want.

Dear Sprout,

Right now, it’s a little after 7 in the morning, and you’re sleeping peacefully in your crib and I’m wide awake because you wanted to nurse and now the sun is up. I’m sitting here in my easy chair snatching a few minutes of me time, before you or your daddy wake up and need me again. Then I hear you from across the quiet house, just one piercing cry, and I’m up to see if you’re really awake, or just having a bad dream. I find you laying there, eyes wide open, whimpering, and I smile down at you as I pick you up. “It’s ok, sweetie, mommy’s here.” I love the way you melt into my chest and your whimpers stop immediately, like just my presence makes all the bad things of this world go away.

I open the blinds to let what little sun there is on this rainy morning in your window, and together we go back out to my easy chair, where I cuddle you a minute longer, then settle you into your usual spot, propped up on the nursing pillow and my leg, so we can look at each other’s faces while I get a little work done for school. People tell me I’m going to regret holding you all the time like this, that you’re going to wind up spoiled and I’ll never be able to get anything done because you’ll want to be held all the time, but I think they’re crazy. I wouldn’t trade anything for these morning cuddles, your happy baby smiles, the total love and adoration I see in your big eyes, sometimes green, sometimes blue, sometimes silvery grey. I love to hear you talk to me in your sweet baby language of grunts and coos and breathy laughter. I know someday soon you won’t fit in your spot; you get bigger and bigger every day. So for right now, I’ll just sit here, and try to capture every second in my memory, for the days when you no longer want to cuddle with mommy in the morning. 

Love and loss

Dear Sprout,

Right now, your Uncle Booger is going through his first big heartbreak, and it has me thinking about someday when I’ll have to console you through the same thing. It already makes my heart ache to think about you hurting that way, but its pretty much inevitable. You almost never spend the rest of your life with your first love, and if you do, my little man, you’ll be a much luckier person than your mom and dad have been. While I’m thinking about it, let me write you the advice I will hopefully give you when the horrible day finally comes that you come to me, bawling your eyes out because some pretty little lady has broken your heart.

The gist of it is rather trite: it will get better. When you’re sitting in the middle of it, it feels like the world is ending, but once you find your way past it, you finally see that it worked out for the best. I’m not saying you’ll forget your first love, because you won’t. I am as in love with your father as any one person can love another, and sometimes I still have dreams about my first love. Your first love is a part of you forever, because they are your first. But one day you will find that it didn’t end because there was something wrong with you, or that there was even necessarily something wrong with them, but because you weren’t meant for each other. You have to move past that first love to find the person God made you for, but that first love makes you the person that God made for your forever love. I hope that made sense. Your father and I would not have been the people we are today if it were not for the people we loved before we met, and if it hadn’t been for all that heartbreak, we would have never had you.

So I hope someday, when your little heart is breaking, you’ll take my advice, and you’ll feel the pain of the heartbreak for what it is: refining fire that will make you the man you’re supposed to become.