A New Year; A New Life
Jacqueline Fennington
MSN Class of 2010
(1/2012) I guess you are truly an adult when you start realizing and commenting on how fast time goes by.
My cousin-in-law just graduated from high school last Spring and is now working a part-time job while taking classes at a community college. Of course, the traditional four-year, living on campus college route is the more fun, less realistic, fantasy lifestyle. When we asked him how post-high school life was, he shook his head sadly and said, “I just
don’t know where the time goes, man.” I couldn’t help but laugh, feeling the same way after graduating college.
This new year in particular I am amazed by how much my life has changed in just a year. Up until about 10 months ago, I never really paid much attention to how quickly time passed and certainly never measured time by any means. Once I was pregnant, I started measuring time by how many weeks or months pregnant I was. Now I measure time through my
beautiful baby girl, Lucy.
In the beginning, I measured time by how many days old Lucy was, then it was weeks old and now we measure by months. She is now three months old and I find myself measuring time by Lucy’s many new developments and discoveries. She is still in the process of discovering that her hands are actually attached to her body and she has control over them.
Sometimes Lucy holds her hands together close to her face as if she is praying or trying to theatrically explain something. When she raises her eyebrows at you, it adds so much expression and I honestly feel like I am having a conversation with this little baby who cannot speak. If only she could talk, I know she would have so much to say. One of these days…
Lucy also discovered her thumb, but has yet to realize that she can easily move her hand up to her mouth to easily enjoy it. Sometimes I find her leaning her whole body down to her thumb, making it look so difficult. Every day she gets more and more in tune to her hands and how she can control them. The day she discovered her thumb was a day like no
other. I woke up at 9:00 a.m., turned to Sean and asked, “Did Lucy wake up and I slept through it?” I went into Lucy’s room to check on her and found her happy as could be sucking her thumb in her crib. That was the start of our late mornings and I couldn’t be happier!
After a month or so, Lucy became more vocal, making cute little noises as if she is responding to you. She has the singsong sigh that sounds like she just got home from the longest day at work and then there’s the belly laugh. The belly laugh is my favorite. Whatever I did to make her laugh, I do repeatedly to try to get her to laugh again. It doesn’t
always work, unfortunately. For instance, when we have a visitor and I say, “Hey, do you want to hear her laugh?” We get all excited and I try tickling her in the same spot or whispering gibberish in her ear and sure enough, she looks at me like I am crazy. It’s like she’s saying, “You really expect me to fall for that again? Silly Mom…”
Though she is not forming full words, Lucy is working on it and makes small improvements every day. Sometimes she has a “ma-ma” cry where it sounds like she is saying “mom.” If only she wasn’t crying when she says it! She also makes a “k” sound when she is making noises. One night I looked at her when she did this and thought, oh my, you are really
going to talk someday! What’s next, “Ma, can I have the keys?”
These little ways to measure time are absolutely priceless. A baby truly does help you realize how fast time goes by. When we saw family members around the holidays, everyone first commented on how big Lucy grew in such a short amount of time.Time goes by so fast now, but at least I am noticing the little details of each and every second along the way.
It makes life feel more fulfilled. There are also the days that feel much less fulfilling, like when 5:00 rolls around and the only thing I managed to accomplish that day was changing out of my pajamas. At times like that, I just look at Lucy and how beautiful she is and realize my day couldn’t have been that much of a waste.
Read other articles by Jacqueline Quillen
