Today I’m writing on prompt #2 for Mama Kat’s Writer’s Workshop: If you could have given yourself a snapshot 5 years ago of what your life is like now, what would the picture be of and how do you think you would have felt about it?

I thought about this for a while and finally chose this picture, which I took a couple of nights ago. Menininho is going to town on some beef and beans, totally grossing out my mom and Mark, and cracking me up.

Five years ago I wasn’t sure I’d ever have a biological baby. I desperately wanted to experience pregnancy (you know, some day after I was married and all that; not as a sophomore at college) and it was just too early to tell if that would be able to happen for me. I worried about it a lot, increasingly so as the years went by…right up until I was able to hold Menininho for the first time, when he was REAL.

So, it would have alleviated a lot of anxiety to be able to see this snapshot and know that things would turn out ok, that I’d have a spunky, independent little boy with a stubborn streak as long as I am tall.

Menininho’s learning so much now it blows my mind. His new thing is “reading” books. He’ll sit in the book corner we’ve constructed for him (Mark installed a small bookshelf next to the kitchen table, full of board books) and just open and close books forever. Today he came when my mother called him, and tonight he tried to crawl out the door after Mark and I when we left to see a movie. Then he cried when he realized he wasn’t coming with us. He also knows what will get him into trouble. For instance, he’ll sneak over to grab the TV remote and then try to crawl away fast as soon as he’s caught. I can’t believe how quickly my little baby is growing up, and I can’t wait to see what happens five years from now!