Anderkins

Poor little soul.

Sometimes you are happy though . . . or, at least, not wholly unhappy:

He has given me probably three real smiles now. The first one was about a week ago and I think I actually burst out crying. It wasn’t little – a slight or half smile – it was a full, wide, huge smile. It transformed his whole face and lit up his tiny eyes and it just felt . . . like such a well earned and much needed reward. He isn’t colicky by any means, I can calm him, it just takes kind of a lot of effort to keep the little soul calm. Sometimes I look at my little man and think that he just hadn’t quite reckoned on life being so hard. There he was, in the pre-existence, waiting anxiously: so eager and excited to come. He knew it would be hard. He’d been taught how hard it would be, but . . . it is tricky to really imagine properly what “hard” will actually feel like. Kind of like when I run a marathon. I know it will be exhausting and painful, but I want to do it, and I don’t really believe it will be that difficult ‘til I am running those last miles and realizing that my mind couldn’t fully comprehend, beforehand, how bad it could truly feel.

That’s what I think when I look at Anders with his little chin quivering sadly: “You poor little soul, you knew it would be hard, you’d prepared as best you could, but you were so excited to come, and now, here you are, and the reality of ‘hard’ is a bit surprising. Your stomach hurts all the time, and you have thrush, and you’re hungry, or cold, or hot, and people keep buckling you in car seats (which you seem to think is quite awful); and you just didn’t bank on how it would really be – this coming to earth and having a body business. But don’t worry. It’s hard for me too. I understand. We’ll make it through this together. And it won’t always be hard. There’ll be lots and lots of times like the time when you first smiled at me. Times like that, when being here will make perfectly wonderful sense, when being here will seem like a very happy easy and grand place to be!”

I do love the little one. And look at this picture Daisy took (totally edit free):

She also took those two of me on my bed with Anders that I posted a few weeks ago. I have to set the settings for her, but I like that she is getting how to focus where I want her to – so the right things are clear and the right things are blurry, the subjects stay bright, etc. Mostly I am too nervous to let my camera be in my kids’ hands, but perhaps I shall train her up (then I can continue to appear in the occasional family photos).