Ava was off with Leah in Decorah this past weekend to have a girls weekend. I missed them both.
When I saw Ava on Sunday afternoon, there was something different about her. She didn’t look any taller or heavier, but the way she moved and talked made her seem somehow…older, like a little girl instead of our sweet little baby. I figured I must be imagining it.
But the next day, Leah commented on the same thing during a phone conversation with her mom. She and I talked briefly about it and concluded that there we weren’t crazy; Ava really had grown up a little bit in the space of two days.
After you’ve witnessed the birth of a child, I think maybe you become a bit desensitized to miracles. And it doesn’t help that living with an infant provides an almost continuous stream of miraculous events. That first smile. Sitting up. Rolling over. First steps. First laugh. First hug. Things that sound mundane and expected to anyone without a child, I know.
Our days now are punctuated with spontaneous smiles and laughter. Last night we were all in the kitchen. Leah, trying to get my attention, said, “Hey pops!” She just said it once, then she proceeded to ask me some question or another. Halfway through, a little voice piped up from somewhere below our waists. “Hey pops!” “Hey pops!” Aside from how insanely cute and hilarious it was to hear Ava say these words, I was taken aback, at first, by the fact that Ava was down there listening, desperate to be able to communicate with us.
I wonder how it would change a child if it could really understand how much its parents love it.