You’ve lived your life in a bubble. All twelve months, plus the two months that you were still in utero.
You’ve yet to know the joy of bouncing up and down in a restaurant high chair, banging a sippy cup a little too loudly on the table out of excitement.
You’ve yet to sit in the front of a grocery store shopping cart, slowly waving your chubby baby hand at the old ladies who smile as we pass by.
You’ve yet to crawl across the floor during library storytime, making friends with the other babies who are also there with their moms, desperate for social interaction.
You’ve lived your life in a bubble.
On one hand, it’s a mother’s dream. Who doesn’t want to keep their baby close, protecting them from the big, bad world? We had time to recover. We had cuddles at home. We had uninterrupted nap times, and lots of sibling bonding.
On the other hand, it feels like we missed out on some of the fun, exciting milestones that babies typically experience during the first year of life — we can never get that time back, and you will never be this age again. While you will never remember the year that you lived in a bubble, thank God, I feel like a part of me might always wonder what this year would have been like, if not for the bubble.
One day, you will be old enough to ask me what life was like when you were a baby. And by then, I hope I will have enough perspective to not dwell on the things that we missed. It was a year of wearing pajamas more often than not. A year where our house was messy and lived in, but full of love. A year where Mommy and Daddy had to say “no” more than they’d like, but a year where we did everything we could to keep you and your siblings safe and healthy.
When you ask me, I will tell you that you were always our bright spot on a hard day, during the year that we lived our life in a bubble.
Feature image photo credit: 21 Vines Photography
