It's still new to me!

"Let's go, Mom! You're so cool!"
(Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's what he was thinking.)

Have I mentioned that Ben is six-months old?! :) So when I talked to my sister on Ben's half-birthday, she cheerfully commented, "Wow! You're like just a mom with a baby now - it's not new anymore!" Meant to be an observation of an achieved milestone, she had unintentionally fallen into the hot mess of my am-I-not-a-New-Mom-anymore-? crisis. (Very similar to the are-we-still-newlyweds-? crisis of '05, to which I decided the answer was "yes" until three years. Now the answer is "no. old marrieds.")

So I proceed to whine about how it seemed much more cool to be a New Mom than A Mom with Kid/s. New Moms are young, hip, balancing family, social and sometimes work lives. They still hang with their non-kid friends, just with a little baby in tow. (If you're insulted b/c your baby is older than mine, just know that I am making these assumptions based on watching your example!) The scariest part is that Moms make a mistake and are labeled as "careless" and not "hands-on." Nobody ever says this about a New Mom! New Moms can write off parental misgivings as "still learning the ropes" and are comforted with "it happens to everybody!"

What I decided though, and Jess backed me up (probably b/c she sensed my emo-instability), is that because Ben is always going to be entering a new phase, I will always be a New Mom! I will be a New Mom of a kindergartener, a New Mom of a teenager who just started driving, a New Mom whose son's wife just had a baby, etc. Sure, that might be a stretch, but it made me feel better at the time. I just hope that, even in the hard days or years, Ben always seems "new" to me and I can remember to be thankful for who he is and the happiness I feel just being near him.