The Surreal Life

I finally started putting more of NJ's clothes into the closet. I still have to organize them and I probably haven't yet gotten quite all of them hung up yet, but it's a step. This is a step into creating NJ's Room. The Nursery.

When I was still pregnant, people used to ask "Do you have The Nursery set up yet?" and I would casually reply, "No." NJ doesn't need a room of her own yet. Heck, she's not even in her co-sleeper yet. I like having her safely beside me because it makes all this more real to me. I have two kids. I have a baby. There is now a new life I am responsible for. When she ooches over next to my preferably naked torso so all she has to do is open her mouth and get The Boob, I feel connected to her. In these moments I feel like perhaps, just perhaps, this year hasn't been as surreal as it has occurred for me.

I sit and watch NJ quite a bit during the day, not in the same way we did when G was an infant. When G came along, M and I would watch him sleep, standing by the crib in complete awe of what we had created. With NJ it's different. I watch her and my life becomes more real, more delicate. Her presence means so many things. That my mother is gone and just how precious the bond is between mother and child. That I suddenly have a FAMILY, it's just not just M and I with G... a powerful threesome, each other's sidekicks. That I am getting older. That I should have my shit more together because life is no longer manageable, but a tremendous juggling act. That I don't know quite as much as I thought I did, which wasn't much in the first place.

Last night G was goofing off and just about to drive M and I crazy when he fell off the recliner with a loud thump. I was sitting next to him and saw him in my peripheral vision dive into the taut red leather and rebound onto the hardwoods below. G jumped up, startled with a look of guilt for not having listened to his father and I. I watch him start to open his mouth and tell me he was fine. Instead a loud howl of pain let loose and his face contorted to match the sound. I set NJ down and scooped my 40+ pound boy and comforted him. He managed not to crack his head, but rather stopped his fall by using the knuckles on each hand. As he howled, I watched him, amazed by his size. I used to watch a tiny face howl in front of me. How surreal to see that familiar expression of my son crying, but on a face the size of my own. When did this happen? When he he get so old? Where did my baby go?

In the next blink, NJ will be this big. It's hard to imagine now, at this moment. It's hard to fathom where I am. Who I am. What has happened. How Time has progressed.

Life is so very strange. Is it just me or do other people feel this way?