Then to Now

We measure. We're parents, and we measure.

How much did she eat? How much has she grown? How many times did she pee? Are the scissors stored high enough? Are the naps long enough? Time, volume, quantity, height, weight, occurences ... we count them all. It's a compulsion, nearly.

Her presence in our lives is massive - coming home to her each night, she surprises us with her smallness, having grown so large in our imaginations throughout the day. Nora is a bitty thing, yet - waistbands are not often snug, and we've met drooling, cooing 10-month-olds that could smoosh her if they wobbled over. But she is quite undeniably getting sooo much bigger.

As Nora would say: "WOW!" Because watching it happen is sort of like tossing one of those tightly packed sponge capsules into the bath and watching it furl out and swell up into some grand thing, only she's waaayyyy better than a sponge, because she comes with a vocabulary and an insatiable appetite for crackers.

Soon, some bit of wall or trim will be lovingly graffitied with the beginnings of a family record. Little notches marking her height, the inches and feet from then to now. It'll hardly be enough to capture our life with her, and the pictures only leave us incredulous.