Rest, Rain and Reminiscing

Lately all I can do is compare everything - my life, my bank account, my closet, my backseat, my (significantly less round) belly - to what it looked like a year ago. I feel Mac's first birthday around the corner and am floored, absolutely flummoxed, by what twelve short months can do.

A year ago this week I was on bed rest. I went from the sofa to the bed and back, entertaining visitors with a delightful case of "bed rest hair" that can be recreated only by showering, then immediately lying on one's sopping head of hair for hours on end. It's a look that will be on the cover of Elle the moment heroin chic comes back in style, mark my words.

I was under doctor's orders to "rest," but felt anything but relaxed. Everything in me was counting down to baby time, thanking God that we were full term already and watching the clock as days eased by on their own sweet time. I felt antsy and ready and full of questions. (Mostly: "When?!?")

A year later, I'm lying in bed with the windows open. The weather has finally caught on that September should mean chilly evenings, not triple-digit temperatures. A near-monsoon is setting the perfect backdrop for what I'm hoping will be a delicious night's sleep.

I can't stop thinking about how restful this all is, how blessed we are to have a baby who has slept through the night for ages, how nice it is to shower at will, walk around freely and not have to check my blood pressure every few hours. Just before Mac was born, I slept eleven straight hours to the sound of a September storm like this one. I thought often of that unbelievable night's sleep in the thick of our newborn days, when two-hour stretches were all I got.

I'm sorry to seem so nostalgic tonight, but what's kept me away from blogging is the constant reflection I've been doing as Mac's babyhood wraps up. I hope I'm not the only mom who has ever felt this odd bittersweetness at the close of a wonderful, incomparable, life-changing beyond belief year. (B asked if I'd feel this way at every birthday; waxing sentimental over every last milestone must be a foreign concept to the menfolk.)

I'm going to stop reminiscing about the twelve months that upended my universe in the best possible way. I'm going to focus on how thankful I am for a for a good night's sleep, sans doctor's orders. (If our house washes away in this downpour, I may be singing a different tune... Send help if you haven't heard from us by Homecoming.)