Dear Colin

Dear Colin

Its been almost five months since you joined this crazy party. I know, five months and not one blog post about you. To be honest my Biggy Boy I did type out the long drawn out tale of your birth but thought better of posting it on here. Let's be honest; no 20 something wants to read about their mothers cervix, and as the media keeps telling me, whats put on line is on line forever.

We are in the midst of trying to teach you that sleep is something that you can do on your own. It. Is. Killing. Me. Its been three days since you slept in the big bed with me. I felt every single minute of those three nights. The first night you spent in your crib it was a physical ache. I missed, so much, those moments that can only really happen when you sleep next to another person.

I could tell how your night was by how you would spend the last few moment before you opened your blue eyes. If you had a good, restful sleep filled with cuddles and deep peaceful dreams (of what?) you would spend the last moments chuckling. Chuckling at what or who, I only wish I knew. It's a deep chuckle, one that bubbles up from your toes and rolls through your legs, through your tummy and up your throat and then out it comes, between your clasped hands that you always hold in front of you. It seems you are so pleased with the dream world you just cant contain that chuckle for one more second. If when you open your eyes and look straight into mine, or even if you just wake up looking at the light on the ceiling, you greet either of us with this smile that tells me you just can not wait to see what incredible things (Will the cat will walk by? Maybe Isla will dance for you? Will today be a bath day?) are going to happen today. You exemplify how everyone wishes they could wake up in the morning.

I will miss just quietly looking at you while you are in the deepest part of your sleep, when (almost) nothing and no one can wake you up. Your arms beside your head like some sort of infant referee signaling “Goal!!!” While you sleep, tucked into me or spread across the bed, but always oh so warm, your skin takes on this perfect colour and texture. Peaches and cream. Slightly darker under your eyes. Lips just that bit pinker then your cheeks, pushing and pulling against each other. Maybe your dreaming of eating? Maybe dreaming of when you finally, finally can talk to your big sister?

In those quiet moments when you are unaware of your Mothers almost unnerving concentration on you, are the moments when I am filled with absolute wonder and a love so all encompassing that classifying it as merely love seems an to insult the state. I am perpetually awed by the fact that I find every single part of you so engrossing. I am serious. I can be perfectly content staring at you for embarrassing lengths of time.

Before children I used to fancy myself somewhat intellectually inclined aesthete. I liked to think deep thoughts, contemplate the state of the world, discuss art, truth, the nature of beauty and love. But now I find that feeling of engagement by merely watching you sleep or your sister playing imagine. There is not one lecturer, text book, museum, art gallery that has made me see the external world or my own private, internal world more honestly, with more compassion or more insight.

I was saying to your Dad tonight that is blows me away how each baby is perfectly designed so every single part of them is appealing to their parents. From your pinky toe to your left eyebrow, each part of you is formed specifically for me to find endearing. Nature, genetics and evolution are frightening forces to reckon with.

Well my Biggy Boy. I can hear you crying again in your crib. How it rips at my heart. But maybe years from now you will read this and forgive me the therapy you had to go through because I decided to let you cry it out. Or, more likely, you'll just read this and roll your eyes (looking much like your Father I imagine) and think what sentimental, overwrought pandering. At which point I will smile and think, wait until you make me a Grandma before you judge this overwrought sentimental Momma.

I love you to the moon and back again.