Babies, undocumented.

Last week, I got to hold a baby. An extremely small, barely seven week old baby. He spit white gluey stuff on my sweater.

I'm in love.

People usually call babies "miracles." I don't know that I agree. It is a natural thing, after all. I think when we say "miracle," we really mean wonder. Which it is. I sat there and jiggled Baby S. until he fell asleep in my arms. He curled his head into my chest and held his impossibly tiny right hand up to his face. I sat there for over half an hour with this tiny person sleeping in my arms, and the whole time I was full of wonder. At the crook of his knee. At the small sleeping grunts he made with each breath. At the way his left arm strewn out wildly to the side. At his face, his small and perfect human face. And at the way he woke up, his eyelids slowly opening and closing like the wings of a butterfly when it lands on a branch and you sit watching it suddenly still and slow.

And then he opened his eyes for real and stretched his neck out and squawked like a flightless bird and I couldn't stop laughing. Babies are incredibly weird. And entertaining.

*****
So all this got me thinking about babies. Why do I love them? It's not that I'm romantic about them. Heck no. I spent two months this summer changing diaper situations I never thought I'd face, and handling scream fests 6 times an hour (not to mention toddler meltdown every 3 minutes). They are hard hard work, and I want to wait a long time before I get one of my own. They know they are being bad a lot earlier than we give them credit for, and they are selfish little devils. So . . . why are they so much fun?

Because they delight in things like a roll of toilet paper. And because . . . they need us.

You can understand dependence when you know the Maker's hand
-"The Cave," Mumford and Sons