Baby Legs

I wrote this little essay for a Baby Legs contest recently.
I use the term essay loosely.

The winner get's a gift certificate and I'll do anything for a freebie, so this was the crack I took at it.  I'll let you know if we get any prizes :)  (we did our best, and even mentioned Baby Legs by name!)

Molly in her Baby Legs

The theme was to tell them about your summer plans.

This summer I will be a mother.  For the past thirty summers I have been a daughter, a sister, an ice-cream scooper, a paralegal, sometimes even a babysitter, but never a mother.

My very first child, Molly, was born this past spring.  We spent a few months getting acquainted, but now that summer has arrived, we’ve really hit our stride.  We’ve got a routine, Molly and I.  She’s sleeping through the night (which is to say we are both able too), and I’ve learned to stock her diaper bag with things like sun hats, plenty of wipes, more diapers than I ever think I could possibly need, and extra socks-- in fact a whole extra outfit-- before we head out on trips to visit friends or hit up the farmers market.  

This summer I will be a mother, and that will mean Molly and I will head to the park together to see our favorite musician Caspar Babypants perform Stompy the Bear, it will mean laughing uncontrollably at one another (now that Molly has learned to laugh), it will mean taking a trip to Maine (which will also be our first journey together on an airplane) to visit her grandparents, and it will mean snuggling.  Lots and lots of snuggling.  

Being Molly’s mother this summer also means I am on the hunt for a shorter hairstyle-- now that she is in the stage (please let it be only a stage) of pulling and tugging on my hair, it will mean that I no longer flip through my pregnancy books at the first sign of any tiny ailment within my own body, and instead flip through my baby’s-first-year books whenever anything is the slightest bit out-of-the-ordinary with hers, and means my eyes tear up a little as I begin to pack up the newborn clothes that Molly has outgrown, and again when she starts wearing her newborn sized Baby Legs as arm warmers instead of leg warmers.  

This summer will be the summer that my daughter is an infant. By winter she will be crawling, and by next summer she will be walking, but this summer I will hold her in my arms.

That is what I will be doing this summer.