Describing myself as a baby person, I would not. I was nowhere in the same arena of passion for kids and babysitting as our lovely sitter who sweetly showed up on our doorstep this week carrying a Christmas package for Brennan, of which he’s already ripped part of the paper. Is my lack of enthusiasm for babysitting indicated by the fact that I sadly cannot recall the names of the few children I watched? Poor kids. But blessed is Brennan!

So if someone told me a few years back that I would be head over heals for a little baby, I wouldn’t have believed them. Well, I’d be more offended and hurt, truth be told, because that comment seemed saturated with assumption to me at the time. Assumption that we’d even have kids, that we’d even be able to have children since we were going on two years of trying, and well, that I’d get to a place of enjoying a little whippersnapper.

Eleven months of living with a baby, however, I am different. I will never be the same again. There are still days I think about our previous life before children and the cherished time that was for us as a couple, sometimes missing it. But those days are few in number. And I wouldn’t trade how I’m different, nor the reason I am changed, for anything. Nothing.

Eleven months later, I am ever more smitten with a baby boy, who looks more like a toddler these days than a newborn babe. His choppy hair I whacked is growing out, nearly ready for a trim by someone other than his mother. His smile is as big as ever, his energy level more than what I realized.  He’s learning something new all of the time, including various imitations such as holding objects or his hand up to his ear like he’s answering the phone; peek a boo; or brushing his hair with my brush. He tries to assist with buckling his car seat belts and dressing. There are times when he stands on his own, unassisted, and he walks around furniture, but the interest in walking or taking a few steps towards us seems null right now.  

Fascinated by pictures, he’ll crawl over to pictures of our friends and family and point to them. Still ever the observer, he sizes up his surroundings and the people he’s with before waving ‘hello’ or giving them ‘five’. My most favorite thing in the whole wide world is asking him for a kiss and he’ll lean into my face, sometimes with an open, drool dripping mouth.  His favorite instrument at music class for the moment: the drum.

Always a favorite game of his is “I’m gonna get you”/chase, but a new one that’s recently developed is taking things in and out of boxes/containers. In and out. In and out. I will also find Tupperware containers underneath the Christmas tree, or on a kitchen chair. Or maybe I’ll find an ornament he enjoys (a wooden, European Santa) on the piano. My friend, Corrie, told me that she thought the nine-eleven month age range were some of her most favorite months. I wholeheartedly agree! 

Yes, I am different. I enjoy a baby. A baby! Who woulda thunk it?! Certainly not I. But this whippersnapper I’ve been given is most assuredly a good reason why I’ll never be the same again.

Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow. James 1:17 (NASB)