You're Gonna Miss This

Trace Adkins totally has my number. Cheesy country songs are my soundtrack now.

I sat down to make a list that I started while walking Gracie around this morning for two hours, up and down the same half-mile expanse of street that I have determined to be the only continuously-ramped, non-bumpy, shaded sidewalk in all of Tacoma. This oh-so-original list is called "Someday I will do these things again."

• Watch a full-length movie
• Plan my day around something other than naps
• Make my own salad dressing
• Okay, who am I kidding: Eat a salad (they take too long to eat! I now decide what to order in a restaurant based on how quickly I can chew and swallow it)
• View 7:00 a.m. as a reasonable wake-up time, not mid-morning; view 5:30 as an ungodly hour rather than "sleeping in"

Then I realized, I need to remember that in a few months, I will never do these things again:

• Hold a sleeping Gracie on my chest and end up with an imprint of her ear on my skin (she's getting heavy!)
• Get whacked in the face by Grace's flailing arms as she shrieks with delight when I let her hold a piece of paper
• Feed her a sliver of a new food from my finger and watch her face go through an array of expressions (concern, contemplation, satisfaction) at the novel experience
• Witness her pure wonder at: flipping a light switch, holding her hand under the running faucet, holding a cardboard box 
• Trying to figure out what made her giggle, and realizing it was probably that she just pooped or otherwise made herself more comfortable (okay, this one could continue for a few years, more if she has her dad's sense of humor)

This is the list I will be adding to. My Trace Adkins, "You're gonna miss this" list, intoned in a deep baritone with a faux country twang. Sleep training and sleepless nights will NOT be on the list, no matter what some well-meaning grandmothers say, however.

argggghhhhhhh

I got the "welcome packet" for OT school, and it is full of errands of the type that in another life, I would have plowed through in a day after three cups of coffee, and followed up with three glasses of Chardonnay. The tasks include: an 8-hour HIV/AIDS training, a 4-hour HIPAA training, a labyrinthine immunization record that will likely require faxes to my 19 former doctors followed by multiple injections, ordering about $1000 worth of books, and a million other forms to print out, sign, and hand-deliver to campus in Seattle.

What is most panic-inducing: realizing that however onerous this list of tasks may seem (and believe me, just the printing part is onerous enough!), it is a drop in the bucket compared to what my life will be like once school starts and Gracie is in full-time day care, waking up every hour again due to the trauma. What have I gotten myself into?