The Mama

First of all....

Seriously, how cute is he?

We've been home for just over a week now and Elijah is just over two weeks old.  This world of motherhood is an interesting place.  It's a strange feeling to be making all the decisions for another person.  I remember even as we were driving to Birthmother's home state, I was thinking about his name and said to Nathan, "How does one person go about creating an identity for another person?"  What if he hates his name?  What if he would rather be called "Eli?"  I hate nicknames so I've refused to use it.  Nathan said something to the effect of, "Because you have to."

I realize that Elijah's identity is already inside his little person, but it will be up to us to help shape and make him into an individual.  There are all kinds of questions floating around in my head now.  What if we don't hold him enough?  What if he is allergic to cats?  Do we feed him too much?  What if we are playing the wrong kind of music?

Nathan is all about music, so I added a "Disney" channel to my Pandora stations.  But I don't know if Disney is "right" at this age.  So I added a "lullaby" station.

Even though it was one of the most inconvenient things I've ever had to do, I kind of miss living in that hotel in Birthmother's home state.  Life was a lot simpler there.  All we had to do was hold and play with Elijah and make sure all our paperwork was moving from place to place.  Here, we have to do things like dishes, laundry and bills.  I have to cook meals and clean up around the house.  I have a certain longing for the days of sitting around staring at the baby.  But I still do that quite a bit!

But things around here have settled into what almost might be called a routine.  Nathan took over middle-of-the-night baby duty for the weekend, so I got to sleep.  If there is a perk to formula feeding, that's it.  We have been enjoying receiving all kinds of family and friends who want to meet Elijah and ask us how we are doing.   

Being the Mama is definitely more than I expected it would ever be.