Catching my Breath

-

Last night, I held baby girl a little tighter, snuggled her a little longer.


 Miss C, Nine Months
 It was only a brief second. I looked away from her to see her big sisters in the pool. She was carefully confined between me, the well-railed edge of the parent viewing balcony, and a bench behind us. After watching her sister perform a new feat in the water at swim lessons, I looked back down and she was gone.

In the two minutes or less I had my eyes off her, she had crawled over the ledge of the bench and to the top of the full flight of cement stairs. By the time I screamed her name, leaped over the bench and got to her, her hand was out to start the tumble down the stairs.

I scooped her up in my arms, heart racing at the thought of what almost happened, took her back to our spot and kept not only my eyes, but also my hands, on her the rest of the time. When it was time to leave, I shuddered when I saw the rail next to the stairs. The perfect height for her to try to pull up on, yet wide enough for her to slip through when she fell, that rail caused me to realize just how close I had come to losing my sweet baby girl to a headlong tumble down concrete steps. Had she gone for that rail bar instead of the top of the stairs, I would not have gotten to her in time.

Last night I spent much time thanking my Lord for his protection of my daughter. I realized, once again, that no matter how careful are as a parent, there are simply dangers you cannot anticipate, mistakes you will, inadvertently, make.

I remembered the time that Miss M was just a few feet ahead of me in the parking lot of our local grocery store, happily walking to the car. Before I could see what was happening, a car started backing up, almost instantly after turning on their lights. As I screamed her name, I saw the fender bump into her thigh. Thankfully, the driver heard me and stopped, and Miss M was none the wiser. Still, her little life flashed before my eyes.

Each of these times, I am reminded that life is but a vapor. We really don't know how long we have these precious children in our lives. We must make the most of every moment, because before we know it, it will be gone. They will be gone or grown, and all we will have are our memories.

And as for me, I know I will take a break from the computer screen to cuddle my sweet and final baby a little more today.

Comments

Mel said…
whew! Bless her heart! Glad she is ok!
February 19, 2013 at 6:36 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My Story Begins

-
Image
I am participating in a really fun project that is the brainchild of my friend Janna, who regularly blogs at The Adventure of Motherhood . Her project, entitled Mommy's Piggy Tales , encourages moms to blog about their childhood in 15 weeks. Here is the button if you want to learn more or consider joining. My dad, my mom, and me. My daughter, N, has that quilt now. Every year for Christmas my brother and I received our very own holiday ornament. Starting with the “Baby’s First Christmas” ornament, these ornaments usually reflected something we accomplished or did during the soon-to-be-past year. For example, the year I got my driver’s license, my ornament was Daffy Duck in a shiny new car. Every year we enjoyed putting “our” ornaments on the tree. It was a wonderful time to reflect back over our lives and the memories we had made. Sometimes we asked the reason behind the ornament, and learned a little more about our histories. When I married, I got a box with my ornaments in it to ...
Read more

Preschool: Life Changing Years

-
Image
I have been thinking since last week about what to write when it comes to preschool. I am participating in a fun project put on by my friend Janna at Mommy's Piggy Tales. Check it out! There are so many options. I could write about my imaginary friend, Polk-a-Roo, who I was actually a little afraid of. I could write about losing my favorite My-Little-Pony, Firefly, in the sandbox when some mean boys buried it at preschool. I could write about my only child, only grandchild years before my brother came along. I could write about my first “best friend,” the girl across the street (Klaire), who I sobbed over when it was time to move away. I could write about all of those things, but the truth is my preschool years are some of the most important of my life. See, my parents wanted me to be a “good person.” To reach that goal, they started going to church. Not long after they started attending church, something happened that would change the course of my life forever. My parents, throug...
Read more

Christmas Miracle

-
Image
Natalie was hamming it up for Tim the other night. Well, a lot has been going on in the past two months. About a month or so after the miscarriage, I was noticing something wasn't quite as it should be. I took a pregnancy test, and it came back positive. That was strange to me, because we were trying to prevent that as requested by the doctor. They called me in for blood work, and everything was indicating that I was pregnant. I was quite confused, as you can probably imagine. Two weeks ago we went in to have an ultrasound. That was eight weeks after the miscarriage. In that ultrasound they found what appeared to be a baby developing at 5 weeks gestation. We were quite perplexed, of course, because in our minds it should be about 8 weeks. The doctor asked us to come back today because at 7 weeks they should be able to see a heartbeat. The doctor said there was a good chance that there were just leftovers in there because of the earlier miscarriage, but that my numbers (hormone leve...
Read more