32 Weeks: Trying to Keep Ahold of The Present

The heart and snowflake set is still up in my sunroom, so a belly shot using it seemed appropriate. This was my Valentine's Day outfit yesterday... I LOVE that the weather is nice enough this week for short sleeves. 

At 32 weeks, I am working on savoring the little things I have come to take for granted with my one child being 3 instead of a newborn. Those things I am 8 weeks from losing again for a time... Things like:

* Sleeping in my comfy warm bed from 12:00 am-7:30 am every night... No interruptions... no anxiety about my child waking and being hard to get back to sleep. 

* A lovely, predictable afternoon nap schedule: the boy goes down by 2:00, and usually doesn't rouse til 5. In that time, I can nap myself (oh sweet luxury!) or get so many things done. And I don't need a baby monitor, really. Noah calls for me when he wakes. 

* A kiddo that feeds himself at mealtimes. So I can eat at the SAME TIME as him, and not later when the food is cold. 

* One poopy diaper a day, if that. Which means we use maybe 4 diapers a day, tops. 

* A child that can mostly TELL me what's wrong, and how to fix it. 

* The flexibility to run errands with Noah--- he gets in and out of his own carseat, never cries in the backseat of the car while we're driving, walks by himself without having to be carried, and has patience to endure most boring errands without needing bribes or feeding breaks.

* Noah's attention span is so much longer-- this is amazing at church and at times I have my own to-do list to tackle.

* Being untethered to a breastfeeding schedule-- so I can go play at a girls' night sometimes, or do photo sessions back-to-back... Travel away from the kids for longer than a few hours.

* Did I mention the luxury of sleep??

I am trying so hard to remember that these treasures are finite--- that I only have a few more weeks to revel in them, to take advantage of them. Every time I start to feel guilty about a nap, or about handing my iTouch to Noah as he lounges in the bed next to me in the morning, so I can doze for 25 more minutes, I try to remember to let that guilt slip away--- to let the finite joy of that luxury be okay for just a little while longer.

Because change is on the horizon, and I will be losing life as I know it when this baby girl comes. And it will be a "new normal" that will be MARVELOUS in a million ways... But different. And absolutely a loss of freedom for a time. 

So for now... At 32 weeks... I have approximately eight weeks to indulge in extra ZZZ's... In the flexibility of toting a 3-year-old around the city... And in the liberty of being a mama of ONE, instead of two. 

I'm working on loving these last weeks, even in spite of the gestational diabetes, the ongoing breast infections, and the lingering winter... And for the most part, I'm succeeding. 

Here's to a great rest of this week!