Baby Face

This one is all about the baby...
My sister used to have this magnet on her fridge that said something along the lines  "a baby in the house is clear evidence of minority rules."  Elsie is 8 1/2 months old.  This Friday I have to go to Seattle for an all day work meeting and it will be the first time I have spent more than 3 or 4 hours away from her.  Hard to believe.  I am very grateful that I have been able to be home with her so much, that the work I do doesn't take me out of the house for more than a few hours at a time.  I'm lucky.  This arrangement may not work forever, the state budget is being cut yet again and we'll see if the suicide prevention money that funds my work makes the cut.  I am putting out into the great universe that this important work I do, both at home and in the community, will continue, at least for now, as is.  I also must add that I marvel a little at the fact that I am so physically tied to her.  Someone told me when I had my first baby, who knows if this is true or not, that for the first nine months the mother and child see themselves as one being, not separate from one another.  I get that. I wake up moments before Elsie does, I know when she needs to eat because my body tells me, I can read when she is tired sometimes before I can read it in myself.  It's a beautiful, marvelous thing and we are coming to that place where a little separation is healthy.  I'm feeling the need to have some freedom, to feel like I can take some time for myself (more than an hour or two at a time) and go.
I'm supposed to be meeting some girlfriends for coffee in 20 minutes.  The baby was tired after we did drop off of the big two at school and so I came back home laid her down and am letting her sleep.  I've been itching to get into a new groove, to figure out what this new schedule will be like and so I need to stop scheduling morning dates.  Elsie can't exactly get into a "routine" if I change what we do every day, eh?  She is the most flexible little child and will take her morning nap at 9 a.m. or at 11 a.m. depending on what I am dragging her around to do, but I think if I let her natural rhythm take over, we'll have a quiet morning at home and I will be able to get my work done, she'll be well rested and we'll all be a little saner.
One more thing on babies...
When my oldest daughter, Ruby, was about Elsie's age, 8 or 9 months old, we went to Boise for a college friend's wedding.  It was a weekend event and many of my old pals from college went and we all hung out together, stayed at the same hotel, etc.  My husband and I were one of two couples that had kids. We met up with everyone on Saturday morning to go to the farmer's market that was right downtown.  My friend Tony, who did not have children, asked if he could push Ruby in the stroller as we cruised around.   At the end of our outing, when he pushed the stroller back to me he said, "Wow, your life must be dramatically different having a baby."  Of course, yes, it is.  He then described what he called a life changing experience - his experience of walking through the market with a baby, everyone smiling at him, at her, looking at him like he was a great dad contributing positively to the world, asking him questions about her.  He said the experience was so different for him because he normally is looked at with skepticism (he had longer curlyish, somewhat wild hair, he is/was kind of hippie-ish) and people generally didn't light up when they looked at him.  He told me that his days might be a bit brighter if he walked around with a baby all day, he thought people would be nicer to him.  That has always stuck with me.  I feel that love that people send my direction as I walk around with Elsie.  It's a rare occasion for me to go somewhere and not be stopped by someone that wants to love on her, tell me how sweet or how cute she is, ask about her.  Babies make people feel good.  Maybe it is because they are these innocent, pure beings, a clean slate.  They hold so much potential.  Maybe it is because it represents new life, new possibilities.  What I want to know, is at what age do we stop looking at them like this?  When do we stop seeing each individual being as this wonderful potential for goodness in the world.  People generally live up or down to our expectations of them.  Wouldn't it be nice if every time we encountered another human being we lit up like that?  Try it for a day...it could change your life, or theirs.