You're Gonna Miss This

As mentioned in the previous post, I soaked up quite a bit of country music on my road trip today. Don't worry, people, this isn't a new trend for me. I still normally prefer the more alternative tunes, but if I'm driving through farmland and small towns that only have one redlight and a gas station with no credit card reader then George Strait seems a little more appropriate.

One issue I have with country music is how before I know it I am crying like a baby. I like to blame it on the pregnancy, but the truth is that this has always happened. Taylor Swift sings about being 15, and it's like she ripped out a page of my old pink diary. Keith Urban sings about a man losing his wife to cancer or a song reminding him of a deceased young friend, and I can't wipe my eyes fast enough. So by the time Trace Adkins sang about a daughter wishing away the best days of her life, I had zero mascara left on my lashes . . .

You're gonna miss this,
you're gonna want this back,
you're gonna wish these days
hadn't gone by so fast.
These are some good times,
so take a good look around.
You may not know this now,
but you're gonna miss this.

What I really want to hold on to right now is Mimi's stage in life. She's so funny and sweet and silly and bad all at the same time, and I want to hold on to every little piece of it. I want to hold on to how she depends on us for so much. That she wakes up every morning saying, "Mommy, Mommy, Up! Daddy! Mommy!" and that "up" actually means get me out or put me down. That this morning I heard her cackling in her crib and saying, "Spike! Ru Ru! He he he" because she heard the dogs barking. That she knows what a Baskin Robbins is and says "I Cweam!" every time she sees one.


That she is trying so hard to sing now and makes up words. "Sammy Days . . . . a-waaay . . . . . meeeet . . . . . Se-ame Stweet!" I have to remember that she claps her hands and says "Bah!" and not "Yay" at the end of every song. That she screams out her ABC's at random times and gets at least half of them right, but I have to remember that my favorite part is when she says, "L a-baba P!"

I want to remember that her best friends are Emerson and Hadley, and she gets very sad and upset when either has to leave her, but she LOVES to play Ring Around the Rosies with them and yells "Ash-y, ash-y, all fall down! That she does a pretty cute fish impression and showed it to the butcher at Whole Foods. That she will sling her felt Easter bag over her shoulder, grab my finger, and say, "Come on, Mommy, let's go!" I also have to remember that she loves to grab my finger and pull me everywhere . . .little Miss Bossy Pants.

I want to hold on to the way she has sad times and wants to lay her fuzzy head on my chest and suck her fingers while clinging her baby. To our ritual of snuggling on the couch while watching Sesame Street when we get home every day and Clifford before bedtime (or Pippord as she calls him). How she doesn't argue with me about what she wears but is very picky about the order of how she eats her food . . . and the funny faces she makes as she crams food in her mouth.I want to remember that she is just starting to pretend to feed her baby doll and wash her hands in her kitchen and make soup for her daddy to try. That she likes to turn up an old travel coffee cup we let her play with and exclaim, "Mmm, good coppee. Yummy!" That she flips over on her belly in the tub and says, "I swimming," and then splashes water all over me. That she gets really excited when she hears a train or sees an airplane. That I accidentally taught her how to say, "Oh, crap." Well, it came out more like, "Oh, cwap." That when I put her new red sandals on her that she was so happy and yelled, "Oh, shoes!," . . . and then she cried on the playground when she couldn't walk for so many rocks being stuck in those red sandals. That she calls barns and farm animals "EIEIO's."
I want to hold on to this time where she still thinks Mommy and Daddy are the greatest. Where we can take away all her worries with a tight hug, and she quickly forgets bumping her head or falling down. It is going by too fast . . .