Tap, Tap

Hello out there... is this thing on? 

So it's been 2 months.  2 glorious, difficult, rewarding, enthralling and exhausting months... but my baby is now sleeping through the night (with some rare exceptions), I've started running again in anticipation of this year's Colfax half marathon, and somehow my best friend Eliz beat me back to the blogosphere, though her Jude is more than a week younger than Joey... consider me officially shame-based.  

So far this whole motherhood gig is pretty much what I expected... but with way more joy.  I knew I would love my baby, in fact, I loved him in an intellectual sense for 9 months (okay, 8.25 months) before he made his debut.  But I had no idea the depth and intensity with which that love would manifest itself, allowing even the most hellish of experiences (labor, the first 6 weeks of nursing) to become redemptive in some way... to become acts of the will rather than acts forced against or upon me.  I think I'm getting my first real taste of redemptive suffering in this new role, and while I can't say it's enjoyable, exactly, it has actualized my faith in a way I couldn't have imagined before baby.  I'm pretty sure my husband would agree, though the times I've left my boys for a little mommy tlc, I've come home to tears of angst... and sometimes the baby is crying too.  Kidding.  Sort of.  Dave's an amazing father, but there are some things only mommy can do... particularly where a breastfed baby is concerned. 

As we gear up for Christmas at our house, we're praying for snow, (which is unlikely, thank you global warming.  Denver is a balmy 55 degrees today, and I've been running in shorts:) anticipating the arrival of family from around the country, and making room in our hearts for Christ in His most vulnerable form - that of a tiny infant, one who cried, who needed to be changed and nursed, and who probably had a bummer of a teething experience without the availability of ice packs...dang.  Mary was awesome, this much I knew already.  But only motherhood has shown me how awesome.  I've been listening to this song the past couple of days and looking down at my little guy, imagining how it must have been for our Blessed Mother all those years ago.