Time Warp

Ever since Thanksgiving, I've had a hard time with the idea that I have a baby.  Not with having a baby, with wrapping my brain around it.  It's weird.  I just looked at a pic my sister posted on Facebook and thought, "Gosh that's a cute baby.  I can't believe he's mine!"  Because I can't!  I mean, I have my day to day life that more or less revolves around the baby.  This entire year, in fact, has revolved around building, birthing, and caring for him.  We're preparing for his first Christmas.  And yet my brain is still in shock.  Looking at that picture, it was hard to reconcile the me in my head with the me holding such an adorable little boy.  Part of this, I think, has to do with the fact that there are almost no pics of me with him as a newborn.  In the few that do exist, I don't look like myself because I'm so bloomin' swollen.  Plus, I very rarely get to see the baby with anyone else outside the house.  There are moments when Jeremelon is holding him when I walk into the room and get to see the baby from a different angle.  Suddenly, he becomes a different baby.  Kind of like how we have mental images of ourselves, and then we look in the mirror and the two don't always match.  It's disconcerting.  The c-section, drugs, and infection have wiped out all real memory of his first few days, and the exhaustion stole the first month.  My memory goes from prepping for finals at the end of July to prepping for Halloween in the middle of October.  There are a couple blips in between, but otherwise, it's a blurry vagueness.  The brain is a strange thing.

The Berrykin is getting so big so fast!  I knew beforehand that they grow like corn - one of the reasons I waited to get pregnant, because I wanted to be at a point in life that I could focus and enjoy the time to the fullest.  Everybody else still thinks he's teeny.  But to me, he's HUGE.  I think he got his daddy's barrel chest, and his cheeks are getting so pudgy!  I sit around and kiss them all day.  And then tickle him, because he got ticklish last week.  He grew into size 1 diapers about a month ago, and he's already just about grown out of them.  Same with the smaller of his 0 - 3 month onesies.  He's unofficially doubled his birth weight.  His head, which used to fit in my hand, far exceeds my grasp.  He won't try to roll from front to back, but he can pull himself toward a sitting position when laying at an angle.  And he started saying his m's yesterday.  He has a new pursed-lip face to go with it that makes me giggle like an idiot.  I told him this evening that before he knows it he's going to be walking and talking, and then Mommy will blink and he'll be in school.  

Which brings us back to the beginning of the process.  How do I have a son??  This time two years ago, we had just moved out of our friends' second bedroom, Jeremelon was about to get laid off, was struggling with 40+ hours at a job he hated while getting his Masters online, I was fighting with trying to go back to school, and I had a couple months under my belt of trying to make myself healthier in body and soul.  This time last year, Jeremelon was leaving today for Arizona to work, I was about to have finals for my first semester back to school, I had just found out I'm allergic to every weed known to Colorado and that I need sinus surgery, and I was VERY anxiously awaiting December 2nd to take a pregnancy test.  Two years ago, we thought we were on our way to a productive, grown-up, finally-together life.  Last year, we had given up on having a productive, grown-up, finally-together life in favor of surviving.  We had even let go of my dream of starting a family before turning 30 so Jeremelon could get a job (obviously we did try to start, but the odds of it happening were really, really tiny) and we could pay bills.

This year, we're so far in debt we have no idea how we'll ever be able to buy the Berrykin Christmas presents before he's ten.  I have one semester left before I get my degree.  Jeremelon has a job in Colorado that pays the 2010 equivalent of what he made when we started dating in 2001 (but at least he has it!).  I'm halfway through my Journey of 1000 Groans to see just how much I can improve myself in a year.  And we have a beautiful, charming, wonderful baby boy that my brain apparently thinks arrived on our doorstep by storkpost.  The same questions and problems plague me that have done so for the last four + years.  This year, we aren't really even surviving.  But we ARE moving forward.  

No matter how much a spectator might say my life sucks (or how much I might see that it does this time next year), I am in love with what I have.  Hopefully this time next year, we'll be back to being on our way to a productive, grown-up life, and we will all be healthy, successful versions of ourselves.  For now, all I can do is work on what I can control, and have as much fun with my wee berrykin as I can!