Skip to main content

Bringing more light into my life

Well, you all know the big news now: Willow is going to have a baby brother or sister soon.
The baby is due at the end of May. We don't know the gender yet, but we're going to find out soon. Cherish and I will let everyone know what we're expecting.
Now I have to be honest with you. I'm on a roller coaster of emotions here. My hormones are dipping and rising as fast as Cherish's are right now. Of course I'm happy to have another child on the way. I can't be happier, really, but on some days, when I'm having a tough time with Willow, I get tired.
"Oh, my God! There are going to be two of these things running around soon!"
I feel like collapsing and just staying there, prone on the floor, sleeping for a very long time.
Of course, I don't know what I'm in for, but if I don't get too wrapped up in the running-around-and-chasing-the-toddler-and-her-baby-sibling thinking, and accentuate the positive, I can fend off those tired thoughts.
Willow is a good and caring person, and her light shines in my life as brightly as her mother's. I'm sure the next kiddo is going to have a similar brightness, and I will be a better person for it.
Let me relay to you a story from Willow and I leaving the YMCA today:
As we headed for the door, Willow took the time to hug a little boy, then she went up to every person in the play area, kid or adult, and said "bye-bye" to them. Then she said "bye" to every person we met on the way out of the building. She nor I knew any of these people, but they each warranted a special gesture from my little girl.
If Willow weren't in my life, I wouldn't have looked a singled one of these special strangers in the eye; I'd look down and huff on by. But because of my toddler girl, I made eye contact with each of them, and I smiled.
My day was better for it. I was better for it. And I'm sure each of these folks was touched in some way. Even the grumpy-looking ones.
You might think this is a very tiny thing to have happened to me, but it isn't. This was a very big thing. I have grown.
Because of Willow.
As for now, I only can imagine how Willow's sibling is going to affect my life, and the lives of others.
But I'm imagining big, big things ahead.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

With baby comes packing (and a lot of it)

Willow, Che and I are traveling to see the grandparents, aunts, cousins and Mos (or is it Moes or is it Mo's or is it Moses?) in Henderson, Tenn., this weekend. And that brings up one of the big differences between being a couple without kids and being a couple with kids: packing for travel (they even have an app for that, God bless us packing-weary parents). Back in my pre-child days, packing hardly mattered, probably taking up 1 zillionth of a tenth of a percent of my brain capacity to do (six days equals six days of socks and underwear plus some T-shirts, some shorts, a pair or two of pants, put on some shoes, throw in some toothpaste, and I was off). That's hardly the case anymore. Take, for example, if you have a spit-up-prone baby. Do you take two burp clothes, four, eight or, maybe, 16? Better take 24. And how many diapers do you take? Or wipes? Do I need to take baby medicine? Is it going to be cold or warm or cold and warm or warm and hot then ... AACK!!! You get t...
2 comments
Read more

Willow's morning of play, play, play exhausts poor, old Dad

Willow's playtime universe continues to grow. Rapidly. Witness. In the midsummer heat, I take Willow out to our shaded backyard in the morning to play. And play she does. She climbed into her swing first. After I pushed her for a while, I got her out of the swing and put her in her wagon so she could help me convey bags of sand from the garage to the backyard to fill her sandbox (part of her new swing set) and her water table sandbox. She took rake and shovel and played in the sandbox for a bit. Then she waddled over to the deck and started to climb the steps to get to the water table. She played in the sand a bit, but most of her time was used dipping water up and out of the water part of the water table. Most the water ended up all over her. After that she wanted off the deck to go back to swinging. Instead I retrieved the new tricycle Cherish procured from a Franklin recycle center and cleaned it up. Willow loved the trike, holding on to the handle bars while I pushed her...
Post a Comment
Read more

Willow's tooth-brushing goes from rocky to rocking

Willow has been giving us fits for months now about brushing her teeth before bed. She's usually better brushing her teeth in the morning, meaning it's less like wrestling an alligator for me, but at night before bed, she turns into the Tasmanian Devil. We've tried making the tooth-brushing as fun as possible for her, but I usually end up holding her against her will while I try, mostly in vain, to pry the toothbrush into her clamped-shut mouth. Sometimes we give up. We've tried singing to her. Dancing. Story-telling. Tickling. Nothing has really worked. But Mommy might have hit on the solution. A singing toothbrush. Yesterday Mommy brought home a toothbrush that belts out Queen singing "We Will Rock You." This toothbrush ROCKS! And Willow loves it. We tried it out last night, and on the inaugural brushing, Willow brushed her teeth successfully all by herself. She danced the whole time too. And I stayed bruise free (I also, surprisingly, had more energ...
Post a Comment
Read more