Don't blink.

Sometimes, I look around and can't believe these shoes I'm walking in are mine. When did I get here? How did I make it to this point in my life? It doesn't seem like this swollen belly should fit on the body I remember myself wearing. How did that finger on my left hand, the one that was empty for so long, finally become filled? When did my slender face fill out and my eyesight require glasses? When did I start shopping at Motherhood Maternity? Are those the beginning of crows feet around my eyes and laugh lines surrounding my mouth? Who is this person I see in the mirror? My high school days are still so vivid in my mind, it seems as if I fell asleep one day in my purple room in the basement after volleyball practice and woke up in someone else's body. My braces are gone just like my awkward stage, my cheerleading uniform, my personal phone line, my high school boyfriends and my red mustang. All the sudden, I am wearing a 26 year old body that doesn't quite fit. My friends are married or in serious relationships or divorced. They have babies. They have mortgages and grown-up jobs. They worry about taxes and laws and politics and world peace. The biggest decision of the day isn't whose house we're going to meet up at on Friday night or who would be crowned honor court. I never imagined what it would be like in this stage of my life. To be an adult. To be married. To be pregnant. Here I am, still remembering what it's like to be a child, growing and nurturing my own child. Life sure goes faster than you think.

I look at my niece Sophia and think...wow - she's a little girl. She can carry on conversations. She knows what Starbucks is. She has personal preferences and opinions. When did that happen? And Peyton? She's starting to talk, she can walk and we can see her own personality shining through. When did she grow all those curls and lose her baby fat? I wish I could just slow down the clock a little. I want them to just stay little. The days of sports and boys, makeup and mean girls at school is too close for comfort. And I'm only the auntie! As they get older, I feel older. I used to be the child in the niece-aunt scenario. What a trip. All this thinking makes me realize that time is going to propel forward even faster when it's my baby. When I'm the mom. It's going to fly by in the blink of an eye. One day, she'll be going to kindergarten then her first day of high school, driving herself home from volleyball practice and waking up as a 26-year-old woman. A married, college graduate carrying her own baby. My goal is just to let her be little for as long as she and I (and time) will allow. I want to soak up all those little moments with her. The sleepless nights, the sweaty-baby snuggling sessions, feeding her belly the way only a mother can do, all the little coos, sleepy smiles and milk-drunk heavy eyelids. I want to always remember what it's like in those first moments, days and weeks of her life as we are getting to know one another. Sure, they will be exhausting. An adjustment to say the least. But the magic of those little moments will soften the edges. And eventually, the edges will unravel as she grows to become the woman I dream of her to be. I'm already head-over-heels and I haven't even seen her face. Lord only knows how my heart will change when I finally do.