Growing Into You

“Today is a gift; that’s why they call it “the present”.” -Unknown

I was sitting here tonight holding my daughter when a thought hit me. Tomorrow, she will be six weeks old! I just thought to myself, “Wow, where did the first six weeks go?” The time she has been here has gone by in the blink of an eye. It was just yesterday I was holding her for the first time.

For the past couple of weeks, I have been running around Bloomington like there is no tomorrow. I have been trying to complete my internship, finish my independent study class, finish my regular class, and have been trying to decide what I am going to do for money come summer time. I have not actually taken the time to just slow down and enjoy where I am at.

I am at a place in my life right now that I will NEVER get back. I have about a month until I graduate from college, I don’t have a lot of bills to pay, and most importantly, my daughter is still a baby. Today when I realized what I have been doing for the past few weeks, I wondered what it was all for. Why am I completely stressing out about things that will get done? Yes, it is very important that I graduate, but my stressing out about it is not going to make it happen any quicker.

It seems like my entire life I have been waiting on something to happen. I couldn’t wait to drive, I couldn’t wait to play college baseball, I couldn’t wait to…whenever I got where I wanted to be, I always wanted something more. Now, here I am, and I feel like all of the great things in my past flew by so quickly, and I never got the chance to appreciate or enjoy the moments I had until they had already gone by.

Now, I have the greatest thing in my life, Peyton, and I am doing the same thing. This time, it is not that I want more; it is that I am stressing out about what is going to happen in the future. If I do not break the cycle of looking ahead, I will one day be looking back on what I did not enjoy to the fullest with her.

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My daughter, Peyton, is now 3 1/2 weeks old. She is your typical infant: doesn’t sleep in her crib, eats all the time, and cries when you don’t hold her. Her mother and I have been lacking much sleep, but we have enjoyed every last moment of the past 3 1/2 weeks.

I believe from the time she was born, I was beginning to build her trust. She may not be able to remember anything from her first year or two as she gets older, but if I do not build her trust now, I do not feel I will have it in the future.
I believe that she already trusts us. Whenever she is lying in her crib, she begins to cry, but as soon as she sees us reaching for her, she stops crying. She knows that we sense what she wants, and will give it to her, no matter what time in the morning it is. (more…)