Wistful Thinking

Sometimes I go into Maggie's room and sit in her rocking chair to soak up the baby feeling in the room. Okay, honestly sometimes I do it because I need a break and it's about the only peaceful place in the house to sit down. From that corner in her room I can also see into the boy's room. I sit there and marvel at how much my life has changed. Only ten years ago I was starting life all over again. I had just moved to Connecticut and was in about the third month of a new job. I didn't know many people and had no idea at that time where my life would take me next. I knew that I wanted to get married and have a family, but it didn't seem like much of a reality at that point. Fast forward to now and I am a wife and a mother to three beautiful children. In ten short years, a whole period in my life has taken place. Roman and I met, fell in love and got married. A couple of years later Braeden arrived, followed by Evan and Maggie. Now we move on from that blissful time of dreaming about having babies, to raising them. How did that all happen so fast?

As I sit there, I look around and see the memories we have already accumulated in this house. I remember Braeden using the crib that is now in Maggie's room in the room that he now shares with Evan when it was a very serene, neutral nursery. I remember sitting in this same green rocking chair in that nursery rocking him every single night while I sang to him so that he would fall asleep. I remember how crazy it felt the day we took his crib apart to put him in his toddler bed. That lasted about a month and then he moved into a full bed because he simply would not sleep in a toddler bed. I remember the day before Thanksgiving when he ran straight into the door jam and put a hole in his head.

I think about the day that I got to paint a second nursery and chose a bright yellow color this time. Something about that pregnancy made me feel that the baby wouldn't be the serene nursery type of child. Boy was I right! I remember staring at that room wondering if it would be a nursery for a boy or a girl. I remember bringing Evan home and showing him his new room and wondering how I would be able to manage keeping Braeden's bedtime routine the same while tending to Evan's needs as well. I remember rocking Evan in the green rocking chair while he hugged his blanket tight and we listened to the same CD every single night. He would make it through about 5 songs and then be sound asleep. I think about how we decided to tell Evan that when he was 2 he would be able to move to the big boy room with Braeden so that he wouldn't feel like we were taking away his room for the baby. I vividly remember the week we decided to make the room change and both boys were on mattresses in Evan's room, and they both had the stomach bug. That was when our original nursery turned into a bright blue big boy room for two little boys who have already changed so much.

I stare at the walls and remember the day we found out that Maggie would be a girl and I knew that although the yellow nursery would work, I just had to paint it a girl color. I close my eyes and think about preparing a gender specific closet and decorating for a little girl. It wasn't long ago that we brought our last newborn into our home and became a family of 5. Yet she has already filled that room with so much love. The smell of baby and the incessant chatter that comes out of her crib when she wakes up and talks to herself until I go get her dances through my head as I sit and look at her name on the wall, the wall hanging my grandmother made for her, and the many monogrammed items she has already accumulated. I smile thinking about the way her curls are always so out of control when I peak over the edge of the crib at her smiling face. I remember the first night I put her in her own crib and had to fight back tears thinking about how this was my last transition from a baby sleeping next to me to their own room.

I remember so much as I sit in awe at how we went from that one neutral nursery to three amazing children. Then I'm brought back to the here and now by the escalating noise in the living room and I leave my rocking chair and the wistful thinking for another day.