Babies

In My Kitchen is one of my favorite food blogs, but right now food is not the primary topic. Deb is celebrating the birth of her beautiful daughter! Welcome to the world, baby girl, and many blessings on the new family.

I wonder if I'll ever not cry when I hear that kind of news? I cry for the miracle of tiny fingers and toes, for sleepy-eyed babies with downy little heads, for the endless possibilities that a new creature brings to the world. That baby could grow up to be the person who finds the cure for AIDS. She could be president, or a teacher who touches hundreds of lives through her gifts. She could write the Great American Novel, or simply weave tales for her own children as she tucks them under quilts made by her grandmother.

But right now she's a tiny new person, discovering the sights and smells of her new earthly home, learning the new rhythm of days outside the safety of her mama's womb. She'll discover what kind of music she likes, and what her daddy's chin feels like as it nuzzles the top of her head. She'll learn that right here, right now, she is the very center of the universe, and that universe will sleep when she sleeps, and laugh when she laughs, and very often cry when she cries.

Sooner than anyone ever believes is possible, she won't be a baby anymore, and I cry for that, too. I cry for the tiny baby that used to live here, even as I rejoice in the wonderful boy he's become. I watch him sleeping, clutching his well-loved dog Boo, his dark eyelashes feathery against his rosy cheeks and in that moment, I can see the baby he was-just yesterday, I swear, it was just yesterday!

And I tuck him in more securely, brush his hair away from his face and whisper a last good night. I hear him say "I love you Mommy" as he rolls over and kicks the covers off his feet, just like I always do myself. And I say a prayer, a mother's prayer of thanksgiving and hope, for protection and grace and strength, and kiss him good night, my no-longer-a-baby boy.