Stroller Down Memory Lane

We walk a lot. That happens when you don't have a car during the day. We were strolling around the neighbourhood the other day and I was smacked upside the head with a memory as clear as day.

I remember pushing Teagan in that very stroller when she was a week old. To CVS on Warm Springs, just down the street from our condo. It was our first outing together after my Mum went home and it took me a laughable amount of time to psych myself up for it. (Had I known that my outings with a newborn would be the easiest I could hope for in the first two years, I wouldn't have spent so much time on my couch. Hindsight is 20/20.)

 

I took it upon myself to home my punctuality, setting a goal for a departure time in order to practice being on time for important things like doctors' appointments and church. Yep, I'm a little neurotic. I nursed her 5 minutes before my intended departure time so she couldn't possibly be hungry when we got to the store. But just in case, I pumped and packed a bottle - I really didn't want her to cry. (Looking back, a crying newborn isn't nearly as offensive as a screaming toddler - people don't really mind the former.) I successfully unfolded the stroller, having failed at my first attempt the day prior and was reduced to a crumped, snivveling mass in the car park. I had gone through the same routine, in preparation to make the trek to the front of the complex to get the mail, and spent 10 minutes trying to figure out how to unfold the stroller to rest the carseat on top. After shedding a few tears, I hoisted the infant and carseat (which I technically shouldn't have done while recovering from a C-section - but how else are you supposed to do anything?) back up the 20 steps to our condo to sit an stew about what a terrible mother I'd turned out to be. (For the record, now I can fold it up with one hand. And apparently it doesn't have any bearing on my mothering skills!)

Our CVS run went off without a hitch and on the way back home, I called my Mum with a full report...basically that she slept the whole time. She sat in her carseat in the stroller, facing me and I remember looking at her tiny little sleeping face through the peephole in the stroller's shade and just taking in the moment.

Flash forward to today, as we were walking around the block and I looked through that same peephole at that same baby and I couldn't see her, because she was sitting on the edge of her seat, pointing at things around the neighbourhood, taking it all in and yelling things out to me. It was a bit surreal. When did she grow up?