More time to think

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The Kid at 8 months
The Kid has been on a series of visits with us the past few months that will culminate in Gladys and I being named her legal guardians soon.  Starting with our first meeting at Catholic Social Services, our visits have increased from one hour supervised to having The Kid for the entire Thanksgiving holiday weekend.

She is just discovering her feet and exactly how useful feet can be in personal mobility.  Until now, crawling was a significant advancement in her pursuit of finding things to get into and it is a skill that she is quite adept at.  Given her mobility and her penchant for doing cute things, it might strike you as odd that I feel like I have more time to think and reflect, but I do.

I love bedtime.  The Kid and I have begun establishing our own routine where Papa (that's me) reads a few stories, then the white noise machine is turned on and the projector on the machine rotates a cow jumping over the moon, which is reading a book and sheep floating so it is easily counted.  As her little eyes become heavy with sleep, she wraps her little arms around me while trying to burrow her little head as close to my heart as possible.

I rock her until she succumbs to the full-body twitch that signifies she's sleeping deeply enough for me to place her in the crib.  It's that 20 minutes or so that I cannot be checking email or Twitter.  There is no room for baby and laptop.  I am solely focused on The Kid.  And those 20 minutes have become absolutely precious to me.

Sometimes I can calm my mind enough to engage in meaningful meditation.  Lately, my thoughts have been turning toward gratitude for how quickly our adoption process has been, what I want The Kid to learn from me, or what my grandfather would say if he were still on earth.  I smile every time my thoughts drift to Gumpy because I know he would be thrilled.

I find myself sitting in her room next to her crib long after I've put her down to sleep, watching every little breath and foot twitch I can see in the dim light. I am completely awed by her, by the responsibility of raising her and in those moments, I find peace in our quiet time together.  I hope I will always be able to enjoy the quiet moments of life with my daughter.    
  



   

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