Growing and Remembering...

Last night we lowered the crib in Dominic's room one notch. He has been starting to get up on his hands and knees in the crib and just yesterday started reaching up and taking a hold of the crib railing, so I figured it's just a matter of time before he launches himself.


Lowering the mattress made me feel about the same as when I bagged up the first tiny clothes that stopped fitting him. "Wow, this is going fast."


It's weird because part of me is so excited about him crawling and eager to hear his thoughts on everything when he can talk, but part is melancholy for the tiniest time. It's remarkable, really, because while I have always loved children, I've never been much for infants. My favorite age of child has always been between the ages of first talking and I've-got-to-have-THAT-label-of-tennis-shoes-mom. But with Dominic, I have really really enjoyed his infancy, memorizing the shape of his belly-button, watching his eyes change color, looking deeply into those changing eyes and imagining all of what's going on behind there!


I say I'll never forget the feeling of pressing my cheek against his for the first time, but I also thought I'd never forget the feeling of him moving inside me for the first time, and while I do remember the emotion of it, I can't honestly say I could fully describe the feeling. If we ever give Dominic a little brother or sister, I'm going to write it all down. So here I'm writing the feeling of that cheek just in case it all goes blurry.


It was probably a whole week or two after he was born. I had cuddled him innumerable times and was absolutely in lala land (possibly partly from lack of sleep, but mostly from joy), and I don't know why I pressed his little face against mine that particular day. I had expected his cheek to feel ... I don't know ... less substantial, more like it was filled with air. But it was so firm and squishy (wow these aren't very good words for it... putting things into words is harder than I thought, especially for someone who talks as much as me), and this rush of feeling came over me. It was sort of like a realization that this little person would some day be a man.. almost a fast-forward feeling. I felt so connected to him at that moment, and my body felt filled with the joy of it, as if joy was something physical and there was so much of it inside me that it was pressing against the inside of my skin.


This picture is from January 12 (Dominic was almost 4 months old), so it was long after the cheek incident. But you can see those lucious cheeks pretty well here... doesn't it just make you want to squish them against yours?