Abby-girl

I watch her traipse about the front yard on sturdy little legs, this baby-child of mine. She alternately laughs and babbles, bringing me things and naming them- in her own little Abby-girl language. Some words ARE recognizable, though... "fowwwer, foowwwer" she chants over and over and crinkles up her little nose (as if the geraniums I have finally coaxed into bloom have a smell). She giggles hysterically at herself and marches on to the next thing her sweet baby hands can find.

I want to freeze this -this day, this age, this moment and remember. Remember the way her fat baby hands try to grasp brother's basketball, the sweet little point her hair is (finally) growing into, the chubby rolls on her thighs, and the funny little noises and eyes- crinkled- up smiles that are so much a part of her. So much a part of the hum and background noise of the daily in our home just now. So much a part that I won't notice the day they cease to be. That's how these things happen, you know. They become so familiar in the pattern of the present that their passing into the vault of babyhood goes unmarked and unnoticed.

Today, today, even today, my baby-child is growing. Her insistient "uh, uh, uhs" when she wants to be held and loved, the constant "ta- ta, heeeeayah mama" (as she brings various, often hilarious, objects from the household and yard from her hands to mine). This, her Abby-girl language is fast dissappering as she joins the ranks of toddlerhood. Still, no one could have ever explained this to me-nor could I have ever come close to knowing- the sweetness and joy and pain that is a mother's heart. I am thankful, oh! SO thankful for the blessings of these ordinary days~ for they are the thread of which life is made.