The past few weeks I have been having a lot of mixed emotions.  On the one hand, I feel content and happy and I feel so blessed that this is the life I get to have.  I enjoy Ellie and all that we do during the day and I did not expect to feel so full from being with her all the time.  On the other hand, I have felt a bit sad.  I have spent time reflecting on where we were a year ago and I am utterly in shock that a whole year of Ellie's life has passed.  I wonder why I didn't treasure some of those moments cradling her and nursing her at 2am.  I also wonder why I seemed to long for the next stage to come when things don't get easier, just different.  I see how quickly the moments pass and that we will never repeat each developmental phase with Ellie again. 

 

Perhaps what I will always remember most about this year is how much we observe (any everyone else tells us, too) Ellie's happiness and smiling face.  I don't know where she gets such an animated, personable, and engaging expression.  Perhaps her enthusiasm about most of life highlights even further why our current issue seems so out of character for her: (As I mentioned in my last post) Ellie becomes quite irate if she does not get her way.  Any time I grab a toy (or usually something that is not supposed to be a toy) from her, or move her to where she does not want to be, she gets very upset.  I hate seeing her upset and I feel like she is mad at me, which is hard to tolerate.  She has spent more moments in tears in the last few weeks than she has in many months.  At the same time, I know that this is just the beginning of letting her go and allowing her to develop her own wants and desires and to figure our where she fits in this big world.  So, I think that each day that has passed since her birth has been one more day of letting go and moving on.  I know this is healthy, but some days it is hard to see it as positive rather than as a loss. 

 

One a much lighter note, we had a very humid day and Ellie's hair got quite curly.  The picture above doesn’t really capture it (it looks more like bed head, don’t you think?)  Though it is cute, I feel bad for her because it is a pain to have to grow up managing curly hair, especially if we continue to live in a humid climate.  But, hey, it's just one more thing I can't and shouldn't control.