Growing Up

I am really not trying to "one-up" Dan by blogging tonight. I was planning on blogging today anyway, but was a little busy earlier today with an unexpected relative in town. You see, I have this wonderful aunt that lives in Georgia who came to town for a few days last night. The problem? Well, she forgot to tell anyone that she was coming! Oh well. Emily and I have a routine that we usually stick to, but we interrupted it today to hang out with Aunt Kathy.

I am not entirely certain what I am going to do when Emily has her first skinned knee. You see, last week, all week long I needed to cut her finger nails. I had done it the week before, but newborns fingernails grow really quickly and they needed another trim. I had been putting it off for several days, not because I didn't want to do it, but because it was always inconvenient...I thought of it at an inconvenient time, the nail clippers were out of reach...etc...On Friday, Emily and I were hanging out in the new man room (which isn't really a man room at all -- Let's be honest, it's Emily's play room). Emily started to get a little fussy and she was moving her arms all about and she swiped her hand across her face and scratched herself. This was no small scratch. Her nails were like little knives and she really gave herself a good scratch. At first, I thought maybe she didn't notice what she had done, but it only took a brief second before she let out a wail of pain. I felt so bad and my tears started to flow. I thought, "this is it...I have to cut her nails right now because I am the reason that she has this terrible scratch on her face." So I calmed her down and she was resting peacefully and I got the nail clippers and I started to cut. Her middle finger on her left hand was particularly long so I was trying to get the edges trimmed nice and neat ... and ... I clipped her finger...It didn't bleed a lot, but it did bleed and she did cry and then I cried - somewhat uncontrollably. I felt so bad!! I had hurt my daughter, albeit unintentionally, but I had hurt her!!

I came down stairs with my tear stained face (By this point, Emily was already back to sleep and had forgotten about the entire ordeal!) and Dan asked me what was wrong. I relayed "the incident" and he assured me that this would not be the last time I hurt her..." GREAT! I have more of this to look forward to? So what am I going to do the first time she skins her knee on the pavement while playing? Am I going to sob while I put some neosporin and a bandaid on it? Probably! Or maybe I will have learned by that point that accidents happen and as much as I want to protect her from every affliction in the world, this is part of growing up...growing up for me as much as it is for her.

Speaking of growing up...four weeks into it I am finally starting to feel like I am NOT a teen-mom. All during the pregnancy I kept thinking, "I am not old enough to be having a baby...this is like a teen pregnancy." Of course, I am more than old enough to have a child, old enough in fact to have several children. But I didn't feel like it. Why? I have no idea. I own a house, two cars, am married, care for three dogs, have a full time job with benefits and even have a life insurance policy that I pay for. Of course I am old enough but for some reason I couldn't wrap my head around being a "mom" during the pregnancy. Well, motherhood has been embraced fully. True, the first week I felt a little like I was playing house, but now it feels like what I have always done.

Sure, there are a lot of things that I miss about being a kid - seemingly endless summers, playing outside, cartoons, eating macaroni and cheese every day for lunch and not gaining an ounce! But now, I just get to live that through Emily from a different perspective. And that's kindda fun.