This time I am bottle feeding, my patience for feeding from the breast was slim to none and within the first week I switched to pumped milk. His diet is still purely breast milk, but not from the source. I remember spending so many quiet nights with Scarlett, sitting still in the silence, looking down at her face and weeping for the joy of this tiny child. With Dominic, I wake in a fit of flurry rush to the kids bedroom and scoop him up before his whimpers become cries loud enough to wake his sister. I run to the kitchen and prepare a bottle, rush back to my bedroom and shove it in his mouth to calm his now impatient cries. It is much less peaceful than the quiet moments I formed with Scarlett over and over again.
I have so much less time to sit in a quiet house just watching. With Scarlett I would sit for hours just watching her move. Watching her limbs slowly transition from wild undefined movement, to batting at the figures hanging within inches of her tiny nose, before finally settling into a conscience desire to strategically wrap her fingers one by one around an object and bring it delicately to her mouth. Dominic seems to jump to these new milestones within moments. Each one slipping by in a frenzy of bath time, bed time, feeding time and play time, intermingled with the side project of keeping his sister from breaking her neck as she turns the world around her into a giant obstacle course.
I go days without ever actually looking at his face and when I do I have to double take, thinking that somehow he has been switched with someone elses blue eyed beauty. He is inches longer than I last remembered, no longer fitting into his shrinking three month clothes. His eyes are closer together and his face is longer. I notice his finger nails have grown, but only because of the scratches he has placed on his cheeks and near the corners of his mouth. He is gurgling tiny words and copying me as I turning my lips into the shape of an "o". This is not the boy that I just birthed. This is not the tiny helpless human being that I held in my arms two days ago. He has changed so quickly and I can hardly keep up.
With Scarlett I hung on every day wondering when she would come upon her next milestone. Worried that she wasn't moving fast enough. I waited anxiously for her to roll over, to scoot across the floor and army crawl around the living room. With Dominic I would not be surprised if I came home from work one day and he was in the kitchen making me dinner. Time is going so fast and my little boy is going with it. He is still just barely three months old, but where did it go? He is already reaching for the world around him, bringing his hands cautiously to his tiny mouth. He is already scooting around in his crib, turning himself around from one end of the mattress to the other. He cries with purpose, not just to experiment with his new found voice.
I suppose this is the nature of life, the nature of motherhood, the nature of growing older. As we grow, so does the world around us. As we grow time continues to slip away. If anything I want this ever speeding time to make me wiser, to teach me to look closer, to cherish longer, to hold onto the things that are steadfast, the things that will keep me grounded. To hold onto to the deep love that I find in my family and the wonder that I see in my children's eyes.
As time goes, as family grows, I learn, I love, I gain.
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