My sentiments exactly!!

I was reading Jenni's blog today. Jenni gave birth to her 12th child the week after I had Maddie. She wrote a beautiful post that expresses my feelings exactly. It is entitled:

Stupid is as stupid does!!
By: Jenni

I used to be a moron.

Not that I can now claim to have completely escaped from the tangled web of morony, but from at least one thread I have won my freedom.

This sticky, deceitful thread was the one entitled "newborns are boring".

In years long past, I would gaze upon the face of my infant child and sigh at their helplessness. I wanted them to DO something. When would they smile? When would they sit up? When would they crawl? I checked the books and chafed at the interminable time it would take before they would be entertaining.

Moron. Card-carrying. Certifiable.

When they would curl their bodies into tight little balls as they lay upon my chest, drawing their feet up and tucking in their arms, a chrysalis of humanity encapsulated between my collar bone and navel...I didn't find that particularly wondrous.

When their heads would lift off my chest, bobbing and weaving, eyes wide with unfocused wonder and mouths in tiny o's of surprise, struggling to study my features before burrowing back into my neck in exhaustion...I didn't think that was terribly interesting.

When they would twitch and squeak as they slept, eyes darting under delicate lashes as they sailed their ship of dreams, smiling suddenly, breath puffing out in the heh-heh-heh of a Lilliputian laugh as angels stood at the helm and told them of the adventures they would have together..I did not stand in amazement.

When they would wake in the night, nuzzling and searching for comfort, flailing and furious at the sensation of hunger, knowing somehow exactly how to be satisfied: nurse, swallow, breathe, repeat...I never saw the miracle before me.

But slowly, so slowly...I have learned. I have cut away the sticky demands, the tangle of impatience, the ignorant blinders that kept me from seeing all that my infants were.
They were fascinating. From the curl of their fists to their wrinkled soles, amazing. At two weeks (+!), my newborn has already changed monumentally from when I first laid eyes upon him. He does not smell like the breezes of heaven anymore, but of Burt's Bees Baby Wash. He does not wear the infintesimal speck of size NB any longer. The cord has shrivelled and gone. Every day, he grows (faster, I think, than any baby has before).

I sit and rock him, and stare. I do not want him to sleep so that I can "get something done". I do not hasten to lay him in his bed as soon as he is finished nursing. I do not wonder how long it will take him to smile at me in recognition. I kiss his wizened little old-man hand and do not want it to fill out into six-month plumpness. I am cherishing his tinyness. And I cry for the infancies that I wished away, in ignorance and impatience.

I wish I could have them back, just for an hour, to treasure them for all that they already were.

In this respect, at least, I am no longer a moron.