Bottling Time..

I want to stop time.

Please don't touch another second. Let all clocks cease to move forward. Do not make this moment so fleeting.

I just need a pause to take it all in and acclimate myself to what she's become. I deserve that.

I watch her play with her toys and books and torment the dogs with her not very nice "nice" petting. She looks at everything with wonder and speculation, almost as if she wants to take it apart to see how it is made and then put it back together even better than it was before.

Her eyes sparkle in a way I never knew was possible.

Her personality and smile beam like sunshine, yet her anger can resonate like thunder.

Her beauty and innocence emanate. Her flaws are still hidden.

She babbles in a mixture of coherence and "Sprite-talk" to read aloud from her book like Daddy does at bedtime.

She loses focus in a heartbeat while watching a cartoon, yet is transfixed for an hour just connecting and disconnecting her mega blocks.

She demands to be held one moment and then struggles to be freed the next.

Actual tears are few and far between and almost every heartache can be remedied with a cookie.

She can hurt with her slaps and her refusal of you, yet does not understand the impact of her actions.

Sprite turned 15 months yesterday. Not a major milestone, but the small changes now feel like tidal waves as they become more obvious.

My little baby, who I've obsessed over and hovered over, is now a little girl, no longer content to stand in my protective shadow. Instead, she wants to cast her own shadow, even if it does mingle with mine or John's more often than not.

Time has not been fair to me. Even now, 15 months later, her first days in which I captured thousands of mental pictures and traced every detail of her perfection into my memory are beginning to grow hazy around the edges. These memories and pictures are replacing themselves at an alarming rate with more recent memories, almost as if my mental capacity is full.

She's growing fast, like I've watered her too much. I don't see much left of what she used to be and I still can't see too much of what she will become. I just have her now.

I finally get Jim Croce's "Time In a Bottle". But then, reality checks in. Time will not stop no matter how much I will it or how much I beg for it. Sprite will continue to grow.

I will continue to love her with all I am.

Time will continue to move forward.

Comments

[John]

wow.