Wednesday, December 16, 2009

our little secret

It struck me yesterday how secret babies are.
Bear with me while I explain my (inspired while sleep-deprived) idea.
They are just so private. My mom was over the other day, and said, "Oh, Julia! I get to see you while you're awake."
And I realized--she probably has only seen Julia a handful of times awake. And my mom has probably seen her the most out of anyone besides me, Dyami, and Lucy.
So to everyone else in the world, Julia is like a big mystery.

It's kind of like kids become more and more public the older they get. People oooh and ahhh over my two-month old when I go to the grocery store, because not only are they not that age for very long, and change so drastically while they're at it, but they're usually asleep, or have their face buried in a sling the whole time. Until a baby is about 6 months, they just aren't for public consumption.

Thinking about that made me remember that we've got this little masterpiece, this little treasure here, that only we really get to enjoy. Even our closest friends only rarely get to see her. Her flirtatious smiles, her good-natured grin at three in the morning, the tiny crook of her toes, the crud embedded in her eyelashes, the tiny butterfly shape of her ribs, the fuzzy head, the little dimply growing softness of her, the unimaginable softness.
I've said before: infancy is not my favorite childhood stage. But I'll hang with it by golly, and thank God for the privilege.