New Year

I carried my hot little baby into the guest room where Joe was trying to sleep and asked him to help me with the bath. The house was cold, my baby was 103.5, and all three of us were shaking as we stripped down for the bath. Daniel and I sat in the water, which was a little warmer than my toes and legs. Joe tried to make the bath fun for Daniel showing him the cups and squirt toys. The downtown fireworks echoed outside and Joe and I rang in the New Year with a kiss and a sad naked baby on my lap.

With Daniel coughing and whimpering through the night, broken up by two nursings, several diaper changes, doses of Tylenol, temperature checks and a lukewarm bath, we kicked off the year on about two hours of sleep. That morning Daniel's temperature was down. Daniel kept his humor about as well as I did during his birth. By the evening he was completely exhausted, and his temperature was just below 102.

As we were sprawled on the floor playing with blocks, Daniel stood up and looked at me. He had been extra fussy rubbing his gums, which were refusing to give way to two new teeth, and spread snot from cheek to cheek. I encouraged him to come see me and he took his first two steps. Joe and I both saw it and cheered, and I swept him up in my arms and covered his puffy red face with kisses. Then he took two more steps in between whimpers.

That night we all slept like babies, but as my eyes shut I thought of the roller coaster of a day we had - fear for our sweet baby's health and celebration of his first steps. Nothing has ever made me feel as alive and as completely run down as loving this child, and I wouldn't change it.

Joe asked me what my resolutions were for the year or if I thought it was too lame of a tradition.

Well, I'd like to start cooking healthier meals, get in shape, the usual... but I've been saying that for awhile now, so it's not like a resolution or anything.

But really I do have a resolution - I want to be more connected. I want to love more deeply the people that matter the most in my life. I don't want to bury my head in work and hobbies and reemerge to find them changed. Right now the words of Aerosmith's Don't Want to Miss a Thing are crashing uninvited into my head. I caught it on the radio last week hoping to find remnants of holiday music. There's a cheesy song for just about every poignant moment in life... and when it turns country several months later, it is even worse - but I digress. Life is too short and every day Daniel learns something new. Every day is a day closer to the man Joe and I hope and pray he will become.

I am already so proud of that little boy. He was such a trooper yesterday and today was several degrees cooler and feeling great (other than a new color to his snot). He's nursing like it's going out of style and begging for piggy back rides by putting his hands on my back and bouncing on the balls of his feet. Yeah, I guess I am a pretty happy mama.