To-do lists get longer as time flys by (01/23/06)

This is the first time that January has ever flown by. Only another week and it will be over. I spent the fourth through the 15th cuddling a beautiful newborn and the last week missing her. If I could get a job cuddling babies I would be in seventh heaven. As it is, I have to content myself with cooing through a phone line until my daughter tells me that the baby is either getting mad or is falling asleep. I guess I am both irritating and boring. Or maybe she is just mad that I’m not there to hold her up to the fish tank and tell her nonsense stories.

Ours is the first in a string of babies to be born this year. One of my co-workers became a grandfather for the first time last week. He swears that his baby is beautiful and that she calms down and falls asleep when he holds her. Of course he is right that she is gorgeous. All babies are beautiful.

Two of my other co-workers are expecting grandbabies in the next few months. The place will soon be awash in baby photos of all these children. I doubt if any of the other photos will show a newborn in a camouflage hunting cap complete with ear flaps. It must be a Texas thing. She also has a pair of camouflage overalls, two pair of camouflage slippers complete with stuffed deer heads, and a camouflage dress. She has to grow a little before any of that will fit. I’m still trying to figure out why anyone would want to camouflage a baby.

Our baby enjoys being made into a burrito. The more tightly she is wrapped the happier she is. I’m guessing she will outgrow that at some point. We do not put taco sauce or sour cream on her, that would be weird.

I have a whole list of things I want to do now that I have returned to the reality of my life. I have to put away the last of the Christmas stuff as the baby arrived before I got that finished. Our Christmas tree is still sitting in our driveway awaiting its transformation into mulch or something. It didn’t make it out to the curb in time for the city to pick it up.

If I ever get the Christmas items stowed away I have a list of things to send to the baby. I want to find the cassette recorders that we don’t use so I can record books such as, “I’m a Manatee,” by John Lithgow and send them to little Emma. I’m hoping that will keep her from forgetting my voice. Besides, it gives me an excuse to read children’s books.

I also promised my daughter she could have the picture I made when she was little. That picture is a reminder of how we survived a very trying time in our lives. I was attempting to get it down from upstairs when I inadvertently knocked it off the wall. It fell clear through to the downstairs and somehow didn’t break a thing. Now I just have to figure out how to pack it so it won’t break on its way to warmer climes.

There are a million other things I want to do. There are a million other things I want to share with the baby. I am in the middle of the middle of my life (apologies to Gilda Radner- I stole her phrase) and time has mysteriously sped up. It seems like yesterday that I was the one with a tiny infant and now that infant has a baby of her own. I want to share the way things were and the values of another time and place with this new little life. I want to give her the things I never dared to dream of. I want her to always know that she is worthy of love and that no matter how many things are on the to-do lists that family always, always comes first. Everything else is superfluous.[[In-content Ad]]