Play

Few moments will be as memorable and special as those early days and weeks with Abbey and Scott when we brought her home and rejoiced in counting fingers and toes and snuggled together as a family out of sheer exhaustion.

But I'll take the latest events as a close second.

Abbey is so much fun right now. So much fun. Fun! I don't know exactly how to explain it be she seems to have matured a great deal. Yeah, I know. She's a baby. But truly! She's incredibly different. She has personality. She does things. She interacts with you. She plays. Like actually plays. And I am shocked at just how on board and goofy I am with her.

This is something that's a bit of a big deal for me. I am an aunt to ten children. My brother's children I feel particularly close to, having lived in the same town as them for quite a while. For one niece in particular, I was the go-to babysitter for several years. But I never really embraced the sense of "play" with any of my nieces and nephews. It's something that I'm actually quite sad about. I just couldn't let go and be totally goofy and child-like with them. I'm not sure why, either. I felt self-conscious. And silly. And sometimes I was just flat out uninterested. Bad Aunt. I've worried about that from time to time - especially while I was pregnant with Abbey. I worried that I would be the grumpy mom who never really played with her kids.

Happily, that's not the case.

I now find myself doing anything and everything - from raspberries to funny voices - to get my daughter to laugh. Because the pay off is so worth it. Those giggles are golden, I tell you! I could care less how silly I seem, my daughter doesn't judge. At least not yet. And I would far rather be down on the floor helping Abbey to play and explore than anything else. Before Abbey entered my life, I'd come home from work with a mild case of the grumpies - or just exhausted - and pour myself a nice glass of wine or mix up a cocktail to relax and let go of the day. Now, it's a new cocktail of baby snuggles, giggles, playtime that brings me out of my workday fog. And all that playing - it's intoxicating, indeed.