swiftly

I just downloaded the new Taylor Swift CD and was listening to it while riding to Target (like ya do) the other day when this song came on. Oh lordy. One does not want to be that person sitting all teary-eyed in the Target parking lot with a whiny baby in the backseat ready to do some hardcore Target browsing, but I totally was. This is the first verse:

Your little hand's wrapped around my finger
And it's so quiet in the world tonight
Your little eyelids flutter cause you're dreaming
So I tuck you in, turn on your favorite night light
To you everything's funny, you got nothing to regret
I'd give all I have, honey
If you could stay like that

Oh darling, don't you ever grow up
Don't you ever grow up, just stay this little
Oh darling, don't you ever grow up
Don't you ever grow up, it could stay this simple
I won't let nobody hurt you, won't let no one break your heart
And no one will desert you
Just try to never grow up, never grow up

I can't really say that I don't want Laine to grow up... it has been one of the greatest joys in my life to watch her change and learn and discover and develop over the course of this year (a year that has been both long and short in the way that only something truly new and amazing can be). I look forward to sharing so many things with her as a little girl and a young woman and one day (holy crap) as an adult, but there are moments that I wish I could just freeze time so that she would always find me so funny that it gives her the hiccups and always come crawling full speed ahead towards me whenever she gets hurt.

I've been thinking a lot about her upcoming first birthday: planning her party, trying to decide how I will feel at 9:22pm on November 11th, 2010, remembering what was happening in the two weeks before November 11th, 2009. I've realized that part of why I am so anxious to celebrate the anniversary of her birth is because I think of it as a sort of "birthday" for me as well. At the moment they handed me my little cone-headed beauty and I looked up at Joe and saw the same fear and wonder and relief and joy that I felt echoed in his eyes, a family was born. And suddenly, I was more than a wife, daughter, sister, teacher... I was a mother. So while I am looking forward to having family and friends around to celebrate what a wonderful little human my daughter is, I will also be celebrating the new part of me she created just by being born. And I look forward to that part of me growing up along with her.

cornundrums

(We're just going to pretend that I haven't (yet again) been such a blog slacker and have been posting regularly. Cool? Cool.)

Last night, thanks to the aligning of some pretty remarkable moons and stars that allowed us to find not only a babysitter and free time, but also a lot of excitable theatre people and their groupies, I got to experience my first corn maze. And really, although I have absolutely no point of reference or comparison, I think that I probably had one of the best groups of people to go to a corn maze with. After "pre-gaming" (ie. stuffing our faces with burgers, hot dogs, and rice krispie treats) and getting our glow-bracelets, head lamps, and rations of chocolate at the Darnell household (Melissa's capacity to host things deserves its own blog entry. Girlfriend is ridiculous.), we headed the few miles down the road to the wonderland of fall festivities that is Washington Farms (which will probably get another blog entry in the next few days since we are taking Laine there this weekend to visit the petting zoo and get a pumpkin and do all of those other cute things that you do when you have a kid. I'll also try to keep a running tally of how many times she asks "Whas dat?" while we're there.)

Loaded up on the hayride. Some of us are more excited than others, apparently.

Of course I had to orchestrate a group shot. Thanks, Washington Farms, for having this all set up for photo-nerds like me. And you can't argue with the cuteness.

The maze was... well... a maze made of corn. I don't feel like my expectations could have been too far off given my decent grasp of the English language. But they did have fun little signs with riddles and trivia questions to give you hints of which way to turn. You know, to keep morale up after you had been wandering through corn for an hour. OH, and of course you had the added incentive to escape so that you could bounce on the inflatable hill of joy that was at the end of the maze. Let's be honest, I probably would have paid the ten bucks for that alone.

It's a CORNDOG. Get it? GET IT??

Awesome, right? I might have ever paid ten dollars just to take this picture.

More of the cuteness. Thanks for a great evening, y'all.