Shaking Baby

Last night I walked out with a co-worker who is due in April of next year.  She asked me how the first few weeks are with a newborn.  I thought back to that time, and now it just seems like a dreamy, trippy, hallucinagenic slumber party.  It's true how quickly you forget the pain of parenthood.

As I was thinking fond thoughts of the little angel, I realized that she has actually been around for EIGHT MONTHS now. Eight and a half, really.  Almost nine.  And how I now can't remember what I did before she came along.  I went to graduate school - I remember that - but what did I do in my free time? 

I was still thinking about all this as I walked into Oz, preparing to tell them that I can't make it to their Christmas party.  The little angel was the last baby there (BAD MOMMY!!!) and sitting in one of those little chairs they have.  When she saw me, she reached her arms up and actually started SHAKING WITH JOY.  I stared at her, sure she was having some new sort of seizure, until I realized she was just excited to see me.  I picked her up, and she buried her head in my neck. 

I think I actually felt my heart grow four sizes in ten seconds.  If I could bottle that feeling, I would be a millionaire. I actually felt love course through my veins (though I'm sure scientists would call it adrenaline or something like that).  And I knew, then, that I would actually throw my body in front of a speeding bus to protect her. 

Someone saw the glamour shots that I have of my baby cover model on my desk the other day and said to me, "Did you realize you could feel that way?"  I almost started crying. The answer is no - I had NO IDEA that it was possible to love anyone so much.  Which I will keep in mind this weekend when she does another three-diaper poopy like she did last weekend.  We had to throw out that onesie.  But that's a story not made for the Internet.

Happy Friday!