Warning: this is a very mom/baby-focused post. Come back in a day or two for lots of recent eats if the mom stuff isn’t your thing. 🙂
Being a mom has surprised me in countless ways but one of the most significant is how much I joy I feel watching Finn see and experience life with such childlike wonder. It gives me so much pause to reflect on true happiness, unconditional love and pure presence.
Honest to god, I never never thought that I would love being a mom as much as I do. In my 30s I came to realize that I definitely wanted to have children but I wasn’t prepared for the depth of emotion that would come with it. Finn is the best thing that has ever happened to me.
My dad was always very averse to shows, movies and books where bad things happened to children. I didn’t fully get that until I had one of my own. Now I have extremely visceral responses and find myself weeping when I read news about terrible things happening to children or watch movies or read books where children are hurt.
Earlier this week I had tears in my eyes watching Finn sit on my grandmother’s balcony. I was drinking coffee and he was just hanging out. I looked over at him and he was just sitting there smiling SO big over nothing. Just being awake, outside and alive.
Seeing Finn with my parents and grandmother makes my heart want to explode. I have written this before but you have a whole new appreciation for your parents after you have children of your own. Like holy crap, you loved/love me THIS much!?
There aren’t words for what it’s meant for me to see these two bond deeply. Finn adores my grandmother and you should see the grins he gives her when he sees her…whether that’s greeting her when we arrive after a few weeks away or just seeing her open her bedroom door in the morning.
Finn also loves to bring my grandmother books to read. He picks up a book, walks up to her, turns around and backs into her wanting to be picked up to read a book.
The everyday moments are also incredible. How awesome that he can find so much entertainment exploring the contents of a cabinet?
Or how much fun he can have interacting with water.
This child has ZERO fear around water and is going to be a little fish, I can already tell.
It’s meant a lot to me to be able to raise him so close to the ocean. Some of my best childhood memories with my family and my brother are on these beaches. <3
Babies and dogs…oh my heart. I dreamed that one day Sullie would be a big sister to a baby and how lucky was I that Finn and Sullie got to cross paths? Those are memories I will never forget. My little guy is a true dog lover and I love it! He calls Zoey “o-ey.” He loves patting all the dogs. 🙂
Finn has been the greatest teacher of my life. Things are not perfect but every day I am given a choice on where to place my focus. I am trying hard to keep my it on the blessing that Finn is, and not on the lack of what I thought becoming a mom and having a family would be.
Praise god for his incredible creation.
With love,
Jen
