60 weeks

Today, it has been 60 weeks since my life changed forever. Since I started believing that 1 + 1 = 3.

The first 20 weeks. What a blur of excitement, smiling, sharing our news, worrying about every twinge, praying that my body was doing what it was built to do, what it was meant to do, building that precious little girl just right. At the end of the first 20 weeks:


The next 20 weeks. Getting down to business. Buying cars and building cribs and taking classes and doing load after load of tiny little laundry. The anticipation as the days slipped by. The excitement. The worry that after coming so far, then, in those last few weeks and days, that something would go wrong to take it all away. Who were we to deserve such happiness? We read to her. We sang. We cherished our last time as just "us"--celebrated the end of an era. Celebrated the beginning of an era. At the end of those 20 weeks:


And now 20 more weeks have passed. 20 weeks of learning. Of laughter and sweet baby smells. Of tiny little fingers and tiny little toes and gummy smiles and sleepy sighs in my arms. Of learning her personality. Of watching her discover her world. Of reading to her and singing to her and dancing with her, and smiling in the dead of night while falling into bed for a few more broken hours of sleep, smiling with love and gratitude for the reason we are awake at all. And of course, of worry. A million trillion things to worry about. At the end of this 20 weeks:



In some ways it seems like we just brought baby girl home from the hospital yesterday. We still feel like novices at this whole parenting thing. We are still getting our feet under us. In other ways it feels like she has been a part of our lives forever. We have gone through so much already. Learned so much. Grown so much. Taking care of her feels so natural, so normal. Thinking back to a time BBG (Before Baby Girl) feels like thinking back to another life. And in many ways it was another life.

We have lived a lifetime in the last 20 weeks. A lifetime infinitely sweeter and more fulfilling than the one that preceded it.

60 weeks. Or rather, 3 x 20 weeks. Each window so different from the last. Each so much more exciting.

I can only imagine what the next 20 weeks will bring. Imagine and look forward to with a smile of knowledge and of hope, of patience and of excitement . . . the smile of a woman who has been blessed a million times over in the span of just 60 weeks.