Baby Boy

A month from today Sam will turn two. It doesn't seem possible!

But yet, he's fully "two" already - very curious, very destructive, and very noisy. But it just seems like yesterday that that picture on the left was taken. Those were such precious, fleeting days - gone before I could even blink.

I dug out an old CD the other day to listen to while I was cleaning. It is a CD that my friend, Jayd, made for me after Sam's birth. I don't listen to it very often because I only have one cd player that will play it - must be burned on an odd cd type or something. Jayd is a very accomplished songwriter and vocalist. After Sam was born she showed up at my house one day with her own kids, pizzas in hand, and we had a nice visit. She gave me this CD she had made for me and the first song is my absolute favorite. I remember that she was over on Nov. 1, the day before Will turned 13. That birthday seemed significant to me. It is an important day, filled with a number of significances. So here I had sons on both ends of the spectrum! I had one just starting his life and I had another who was stepping into the stage of life that would end with him leaving me. I was an emotional, hormonal mess and I remember sobbing as she played this song for me that she had written and recorded. I'm a little more emotionally stable now, but the song still bring tears to my eyes. Here's some of the words:

Baby Boy, I have waited for so long to get to meet you,

I have carried you around with me,

from the day you came to be,

I've loved you.

Baby Boy, as you're lying in my arms so softly sleeping,

I am overwhelmed by innocence,

a miracle just waiting to unfold.

As you grow, learning something new each day,

I'll be right here by your side, I'll be smiling always.

And someday soon, you'll be towering over me,

all the tiny fingerprints will fade away.

But right now, you're a tiny little baby, sleeping softly in my arms,

I know time will take away, but to me you'll stay

my baby boy in blue.

It is just the loveliest of songs. At the end there's an instrumental part with Brahm's lullaby and that part gets me all teary-eyed too! I miss my baby boys. I will always regret that I didn't savor those moments as much with Ben and David. With Ben it was understandable. There wasn't much about his early years that was fun. I loved him, but was in a state of exhaustion and grief over his birth that it was difficult to just cherish him for the miracle he was. With David, I was tired again, then, too. We moved 5 days before his birth and then again to our first house when he was a month old. Plus, Ben was still very dependent on me. It was very much like having twin infants. And I assumed that we would be having another child within a couple of years so I didn't stop to think that I really needed to hold those baby days close. David was not an extremely content baby and then he developed thrush and gave it to me, which made us both miserable for months until I quit nursing. I enjoyed both those boys more as they got older.

I was beyond exhausted with Sam. I was an older mother and I had that stroke, which completely wiped me out. But I knew he was our last little one. So I took the time to just - be - with him. I delighted in his little hiccups and the soft down covering his entire body. I had lost my sense of smell with the stroke, so I couldn't actually smell his baby scent, but I would rub my nose into his hair and try to imagine what he smelled like. Every grimace, every sigh of contentment - I tried to soak it in and commit it to memory so I would remember those days when they were no longer past. I would give anything to experience it all over again.

Well, you'll have to excuse me. There's a certain little blue-eyed, tow-headed creature begging to crawl into my lap at the moment. These days will be gone too quickly, too. In the meantime, I've got a son to cuddle.