The Mural on the Wall

I was putting M to bed tonight when I looked over at the wall mural behind his crib. Funny how something you see every day can suddenly have an effect on you. All of a sudden my mind took me back in time to the weekend J and I put that up on M's wall. At the time, we lovingly referred to him as Munchkin, having no idea he would be, well, a he. It took us two days to finish the project, at the end of which we stood back and looked with pride at the great work we had done together. The nursery was starting to come together, and it was starting to sink in that soon we would no longer be a family of two. Amazing how long "soon" felt in that moment, and looking back now, how fast it seems to have gone.

After ten months with M in our lives, my pregnancy seems to have lasted all of 5 minutes. Every now and again a memory pops into my head of life before him, but for the most part the routine of waking up, going to work, coming home, bed and bath time and finally crawling into bed completely and utterly exhausted prevents me from going down memory lane too often. Honestly I think it's the lack of brain power to devote to anything but the aforementioned activities that keeps me from daydreaming about the past.

It's amazing how one moment - one second - can break your life into before and after. J and I talk longingly about weekend mornings spent in bed, going out after work, watching an entire movie uninterrupted, making love when we felt like it and jumping in the car on a whim to head out of town for the day. I feel like I tell him I miss him more than I tell him I love him these days. And when he looks at me, it's like he's trying to find me.

For some reason I figured after ten months we'd have the hang of this new life. That we'd be old pros at this parenting thing and spend our days euphoric about our new family. I guess after 31 years of living our lives one way it takes a little longer than ten months to adjust to an entirely new existence. I am positive we'll get there. In the meantime (beyond being absolutely in love with that beautiful boy sleeping soundly upstairs), I will take what I can get in the little things like the mural, and be grateful for the small reminders of how this family began.