But here in the Smith family blogosphere things couldn't be warmer. Just look at this picture. It'll melt your heart.
Or tear your heart out...depending on how you look at it...
Gabe was just two weeks old in this photo. All the family visiting from out of town had gone back home and it was just Casey, Gabe, and I. And, on this particular day I ventured out with Gabe all by myself! Casey had gone back to work and for the first time since Gabe was born I felt like I had healed enough to get out of the house for a couple of hours. So, we got up early (like probably somewhere around 1, 3, 4, 6, and 8 am), bathed, ate breakfast, got all dressed up and in his carseat he went. I will never forget the feeling I had driving to church that morning.
Pure terror.
Terror like I'd never experienced before.
I had no idea doing something as simple as driving the three miles to church would be so terrifying. But, with Gabe in the backseat all buckled in snugly all I could think about was how terrible it would be if we were in a car accident while he was so small and fragile. I felt like a 13 year old again. It reminded me of the first time Dad let me drive home from school on real roads (as opposed to driving on the fields surrounding our house). I was in the red subaru (the one my younger brother would crash and destroy just a couple of years later) and my hands were gripping that steering wheel as tight as can be, my eyes were scanning the road rabidly for anything that I might have to slam on the brakes to avoid crashing into. It was just like that the first time I was behind the wheel with Gabe. Everything was a potential danger, and other vehicles on the road made me especially nervous.
Lucky for me, that feeling wore off after a while. Now, I only get like that when the weather's bad. Like the time last May when I was on the opposite side of town from Gabe and while stopped at a red light the tornado sirens were sounded. I was so thankful Gabe was not in the truck with me, but at the same time scared witless about where he was because we do not have a basement. Obviously, no tornado came, but goodness it was scary. And, take tomorrow for instance...I know they're going to call school off midday when the ice storm arrives, and the thought of going across town to pick up Gabe while every single teenager in Bartlesville is driving home at the same time does not exactly make me leap for joy.
I digress....back to two weeks....
The same day Gabe and I went to church we drove to Kansas so he could meet the rest of his Kansas family who weren't able to travel for the birth. I remember that we were so, so tired. And, I was still getting the hang of feeding a newborn. Even though the hospital told us not to, we broke out a pacifier for Gabe because he was hungry ALL the time and keeping up with the demand was a little too much to handle at times. We had high hopes that he would contentedly take to the pacifier long enough for me to get myself together for another feeding. It didn't work. He totally knew it wasn't the real deal.
And, so at two weeks we were just living day to day, sometimes minute to minute, doing our best to get through the "newborn" stage.
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