dianaschnuth

He needs a hug.
He’s thirsty.
He can’t cover himself up.
His pillow is wet, and he can’t fall asleep on a soggy pillow.
He needs ANOTHER drink of water.
He needs to go potty.
A noise outside is keeping him awake.
His jammie pants keep going up his legs.
The rain is scary.
He peed in his diaper.
He needs another hug to make him feel better.
He needs a book in bed.
His toenail is funny and needs trimmed.
He wants Daddy to sing him a song, not Mommy.
His toenail is hurty.
He tried and tried, but he just can’t sleep.
He needs jammie shorts instead of jammie pants.
His leg hurts, and he needs some hurty medicine.
He really needs another hug, and he can’t just hug himself.

After Girl’s Gone Child posted her four-years-ago-today photo, with her insanely large twin-pregnant belly at 34 weeks, I got to thinking about how my family’s lives changed four years ago today — well, starting four years ago last night, really.

It seems a lifetime ago that I was laying there in bed at our old house at 11pm, wondering if that really was my water breaking, or if it was something else. Calling the OB-GYN on-call, texting Aaron at work, and finally — when it became obvious beyond the shadow of a doubt that, yes, my water had broken — calling Aaron and asking him to come home. It was go time. It was surreal.

We spent the next eleven hours in a weird state of anticipation. Like a roller-coaster, we knew something was coming, but we weren’t sure exactly what, or when, or what to expect when the shit finally went down. All we knew was that things were about to change forever.

We didn’t realize things would keep changing, and that the state of flux would be a constant, even after we thought we had things figured out. From infancy to toddlerhood to preschoolness, Connor has always kept us guessing, kept us on our toes, while still requiring a level of routine and predictability that we rarely experienced as a moderately spontaneous childless couple.

Our son’s Neanderthal Brain has just about figured itself out, and we’re on the verge of having a small person in our midst, instead of a ticking time bomb or a jack-in-the-box. It almost feels like that same sort of precipice that we faced in the beginning, except not nearly as steep or scary. Maybe not even anything we’ll recognize in the moment; someday in the not-too-distant future, we’ll look at our son and realize that all vestiges of babyhood are finally gone.

Some parents are saddened by that. I think I’ll be excited, because that will mean another chapter in this crazy, unscripted story.