I'm Really not a Baby Person

Perhaps one of the most interesting things to me in this whole motherhood experience is that I am not a baby person. It seems that many women possess this inherent love of babies, especially newborns. They coo at them, speak in high pitched voices, and love to cuddle them. They are the ones clamoring the babysit just as soon as the new parent is willing to leave the house. I was never one of those women.

I always found babies, especially newborn babies, intimidating with their out of control movements and large, floppy alien-like heads. They are seemingly impossible to interpret, and I never quite had the knack for calming their cries. The littlest ones even seemed a bit boring as they could not do much besides look around with confused or sleepy looks on their face. Oh and there was always that threat of spit-up as my sister, the baby vomit magnet, can attest to. (Have you seen the commercial for Four Christmases with Reese Witherspoon and the baby vomit...hilarious!). Granted I have always admired people's babies and usually thought them cute. I just usually preferred to do so at a distance.

Despite this, I never doubted that I wanted to have a child of my own, and I have come to find out that I do love babies...or at least I am very much in love with my baby. I've been enamored with this baby from the very beginning despite her floppy head and screaming fits. I'm not sure what it is exactly that made this particular baby different from all the rest. Perhaps I warmed up to her during the many months she occupied my uterus. Or maybe it is looking into her eyes and seeing a little bit of me and a whole lot of Jeramy in them. Or maybe it is that we are figuring this whole thing out together and that after all these weeks I am the one who knows how to soothe her tears the quickest. It is the strangest thing but all the sudden I find this helpless little being to be the most fascinating creature ever. It seems like every day she achieves a new milestone, and ironically while I would have previously thought this to be mundane (e.g. reaching for a toy) it now fascinates me so much that I could just watch her do it over and over again for hours.

I also find that I take pictures of it all so that I can bore you with every mundane detail also. Or perhaps if you are baby people you find all of this fascinating!

Just last weekend she started reaching towards the hanging toys in her activity gym. Now she can even grab them. Like I said, even the must mundane accomplishments impress me these days!

She seems to like the Mary Jane booties I knitted better than the matching hat.

Here is the close-up. I like these so much that I am knitting a black pair to go with her Christmas outfit.

I never get tired of her smiles. Oh and she does have gorgeous eyelashes...everybody comments on them. She can thank her daddy for that.