Bigger Picture Moment: Scattered Chatter

My Bigger Picture Moment today is all about allowing myself to be random.  To let loose with the things I think about all day while nursing, dozing, and wondering.  To relax about trying to make sense -- I may not.  I'm seeing the Bigger Picture in simple, scattered thoughts.  I'm telling my friends the things I've been meaning to say...very possibly in an unordered and pointless way.  Welcome to my newborn-baby-drained-brain.  Best of luck to you!


It's becoming more and more impossible to reconcile the sweet baby in my arms with the belly I carried around a few short weeks ago.  I keep trying to imagine him all curled up, fists planted on cheeks, ankles crossed and tree-frogged, cocooned and held just under my skin. 

I can't do it. 

No matter what I visualize, he is here, not there.  He stretches now.  He startles himself by pulling on his tiny ears, and his legs betray him by flailing straight up in the air -- there's no surrounding wall to catch his fall. 

Well, except me.  Us.  Those who love him hold him tightly and look deep into his eyes -- the ones we're waiting on to develop a color other than pewter.  Landon is the sweetest thing, and I feel suddenly complete.  Isn't it strange?  I wasn't lacking anything before, and I carried him for 9 months (and three days...ahem) everywhere I went.  But now I feel completed.  Filled and stretched in a way that birth didn't alleviate. 

His birth, by the way, was astonishing.  It began with water that didn't merely break, it snapped and ricocheted audibly around my abdomen.  It moved forward with contractions that were altogether unmanageable.  It ended a scant FOUR hours later with a few frantic pushes.  His birth was so forceful and unstoppable that he ended up with a bruise -- a goose egg; a cephalohematoma -- on his skull that has yet to disappear. 

But even as right as his place in our world is, we're still reeling from the echos of his arrival.  We're all getting used to things: Landon to air and light and sound and irritation and joy; Mia and Lauren to different routines and less of mama; Justin and I to the logistical complications of a third (sleepy and hungry and one-hundred percent dependent) child.  There was a sweet spot of time in the months before Landon that afforded us a glimpse into what it would be like to have children who were mostly independent and easy.  They knew what happened when, and how to accomplish it.  (No, they did not always do it -- we're working on it.)  Now, though, we're back to square one.

It's lucky for us that the inhabitant of square one is so, so, so wonderfully precious.

I mean, really.  How can one choose to sleep when there's THIS upon which to feast one's eyes?

We're seeing the Bigger Picture through simple moments -- moments that force us to stop and take notice of the ways our worlds are important, meaningful, and beautiful. Please join us today at Melissa's place! Grab the button, link up, and then read a few others to encourage them as they walk this journey of intentional living.