“A portrait of my child, once a week, every week in 2013”

She started knocking down more milestones this weekend. One after another. It’s like I woke up today and she is so much more a little girl and less and less a baby. And I had a panic attack. It’s all happening way too quickly and it’s almost like something’s wrong the way it feels when I realize how fast she’s growing. Her baby babbling is changing. From cooing and oohs and aahs and growling to baba, gaga, na na. She sat up in her stroller. No longer needing the infant car seat. And the whole time I’m freaking out because I can’t freaking see her because she’s facing the other direction now. Is she ok? Is she happy? What does she look like? I kept asking that question while we walked. And she sat happily and patiently while we cooked and ate dinner outside on a blanket. And that tooth of hers is coming in more and more every day and she’s so much more aware. And she got up on her hands and knees in her sleep. And oh god she’s growing too fast and I just feel like it’s all out of control and it makes me nauseaus.

My husband and I were discussing it. It’s like we’re 2 months behind. He and I that is. We feel like we only really got her, like she only really became ours around the time she was 2 months old. That first month and a week she belonged to doctors and nurses, whom we had to ask permission in order to parent her. Then when we finally got home the threat of going back kept looming(since it had happened once already) and we couldn’t let our guard down. So really it’s like she’s 5 months old in our minds, not the 7 months that she actually is.

But she is 7 months. And after 7 comes 8 and 9 and 10. And then she’s almost 1. It’s so overwhelming to think about and I simply can’t let go. I feel like I need to capture every minute, every bit of it, because it all fades so quickly in my memory. And here she is curled up next to me, sleeping so deeply that her head is wet with sweat. Because that’s just part of who she is with her special little heart, a sweaty little baby.

I feel lucky this week. For some reason I feel like I got to spend more time with her this week then other weeks, although it was the same as every other week. She amazes me so much on a daily basis that it frightens me.

This weeks photo is her from last Sunday, after her first swim. She seems so much older in just a week that it pains me. I love the way she’s looking at her papa in this photo. She looks at him like that a lot. She also loves his sweatshirt strings.

Last week I loved this photo. This same scene happens nightly in our house. And I loved her words on the Boston marathon as well, these same things have been rumbling around inside of my head too.