Linda and I had some down time last night, and we went through the videos we took of Violet so far. There weren’t many, maybe a dozen or so clips and none of them much longer than a minute. Now, this is probably an utterly obvious statement to most parents, but I was completely taken aback by how much Violet has changed in the past eight weeks. I’ve noticed it to some degree in our photos, but the videos put the differences in stark relief. The ones we took at the hospital show a baby that appeared to have just returned from a rumble, a baby swollen from her ordeal. Her movements were erratic, jumpy. She responded to our words and movements on only the most basic level. “Primitive” is a word that comes to mind. “Fragile” is another, and I would’ve used it to describe her right up until we watched those videos last night. Now, her movements are those of a different baby; they’re almost purposeful, almost sure. She often smiles in response to ours, and every day, her gaze locks delightfully with ours for longer stretches of time. Compared with the baby in the video, Violet seems grown up - nearly ready to move out on her own. Those videos leave me wondering, “When did his happen?” Linda has said right along that she wants to keep Violet at the stage she’s at, but I never completely understood why until last night. Violet is changing at breakneck speed, and the Violet sleeping upstairs as I write this is a Violet that I’ll never get to spend time with again. So, I’m stopping here.
57 days old
7 hours old
There were a few mornings when I'd swear Macie was bigger than when I put her down the night before.
ReplyDeleteBill, she really is gorgeous!
Thank you, Amy - we think so, too - sometimes we wonder if it's just because she's ours - maybe every parent is hard wired to think their baby is beautiful. But what you said about Macie getting bigger, Linda just said that yesterday - she came back from the bathroom and thought Violet had grown.
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