Things(ish) I've learned in the last 2 months and 3 weeks.

Being a mom is the hardest, most rewarding, most fulfilling, best job I have ever had. And I'm only going on month 3.

I love love love it. My heart breaks probably a hundred times a day to fit my growing love for this tiny (okay, so maybe he's not so tiny anymore...) little boy (he weighed in at 13.2 lbs at his 2 month check up... 95th percentile for weight! Haha!).

Everyone tells you, it's going to be over before you know it! And it's true, time has absolutely flown since little man got here. But this kind of advice just makes me sad, nostalgic, and depressed. Very uncool. I like my mom's advice much better (but when do I ever NOT like my mom's advice?): Just enjoy every stage!! Enjoy getting up at night with him. Enjoy him as a helpless newborn, enjoy him as a bouncy toddler, enjoy him as a troublesome five year old, enjoy him as a moody teenager, and so on. And that's what I'm trying to do. I'm not going to focus on how fast time is going. I'm just going to love every single minute of being this little boy's mom.

MOM.

I refer to myself as mommy probably a hundred times a day.

"Mommy will feed you after mommy changes your diaper."

"Do you know how much mommy loves you?"

"Mommy and Gabey are going for a walk!"

And the strangest part? It's not weird (well, it's not weird that I'm a mom, anyway. It probably is weird that I constantly refer to myself in 3rd person while talking to a little person that can't really understand what I'm saying. And the voice I use is probably even weirder. But being a mom? That's not wierd). I'm a mom. And I love it.

People always laugh at new parents for making a big deal out of everything the babe does. Most nights LJ and I will just sit together, holding the babe between us, and laugh at every single cute thing he does. He laughs back, too. He probably thinks he is the funniest thing on the planet. We certainly do. So it's true, what they say about new parents. The funny part, though? It's not just new parents who are like that. It's, like, EVERYBODY. People love babies. Especially cute babies. Like mine. People coo and laugh and give all of their attention to an awake baby who will coo back. And when you have a baby, all the sudden you become ten times more popular. Only, it's not you people want to talk to. It's your two-month-old. It's pretty hilarious.

And if you think you can't talk to a two-month-old, think again.

Because I talk to a two-month-old pretty much all day.

I was thinking about how babies communicate the other day, and I find it so fascinating. Babies in general cry when they are hungry, tired, lonely, bored, have messed their pants, or are uncomfortable in some way. They cry to alert us to these problems, as they are completely dependent and can do nothing for their discomfort themselves. How interesting that they CRY, though, to tell us these things. To us (developed adults) crying means sadness. I would argue that when we witness another person experience this emotion, we have our most immediate and thorough reactions. We comfort, empathize, and sympathize and want to help the person to feel better almost instantly (I'm talking NORMAL human beings here...we'll leave sadistic, unfeeling crazies off the list...). This doesn't happen with any other emotion, really.

Interesting, then, that babies use crying as their primary method of communication. When Gabe cries, nothing else matters to me. All I can do is focus on him, the problem, and how to fix it, ASAP!!!! Gabe is not always sad when he cries. But crying is his only method of communicating. I have learned to read his different cries that mean different things. It took a while for me to figure this out though. Which is great! For the first large chunk of Gabe's life, his crying lead me to give him incessant attention (I don't know if you know, but crying is pretty difficult to ignore). Because of this, I was able to learn how to communicate with him.

And now we have regular conversations.

And it's awesome.

Gosh, I love being a mom.