Matilda is now 3 months old and fitting into family life really well. She is sleeping through and so I have less of those sleep-drug moments throughout the day. She is smiling and chatting and beginning to show those individual parts of who she is. I have discovered this week that she does not like to be left by herself, she is quite happy to sit for a while if she can see you or another member of the family but left by herself is not a place she is happy with. It must be odd to cope with silence when you are so used to noise!
The other evening i was bathing her, this is something we are doing every day pretty much now. We used to do this with the other three but then had got out of the habit what with various after school things for Isaac that were making it impossible or just too late. But little Matilda needs it, needs the routine,the familiarity and the space to have a kick in some warm water and get rid of some of that 'baby cheese' they collect around their neck all day! Sometimes she goes in with the girls in the bath or Isaac but often I run the water in the baby bath and its just me and her in the bathroom. We have never had one of those bath seats for our babies, no particular reason really, but it means that you have to support her head all the time and so there is a constant contact between us. Looking into her deep blue eyes, perfect baby soft skin, eyes never moving from my face, her complete dependence and trust in me, Im struck by how these few minutes of time are so important. Moments like these are too fleeting and I found my eyes pricking with tears when i thought of how quickly this time will pass and how I might not be able to remember the beautiful little fragments of her early days. Its too easy for me to think about a billion other things as these moments too, what are the others doing? how much tidying is there to do? what will we have for tea tomorrow. What I am aware of it that I need to, have to focus on exactly where I am, drink in the moment, the feelings, the sensation and try and preserve the memory. Recently I read this comment on a blog…
“But the biggest mistake I made is the one that most of us make while doing this. I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of the three of them sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swingset on a summer day, ages six, four and one. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked while they slept that night. I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less.”
Much of what i write here on this blog is to help me preserve these moments so I can remember, look back and know exactly the feeling of that wonderful baby skin, the eyes that stare so deeply into your soul with such questions behind them, the first time she discovered that kicking her legs on the change mat made her break out in bubbling baby giggles and then the sensational smile she shares with most people who say hello and how that cute baby chuckle just warms up the room.