Small Victories.

It's easy to doubt yourself in the beginning but it also doesn't take a lot to feel content. Today has been a great day. Adelyn slept from eleven to five a.m., woke up for a quick bottle and then slept again from six to nine. We ate, got ready, and went to MTSU to see my old friends at Sidelines--the college newspaper where I was editor in chief--and then walked across campus to visit my dad, a professor there. Then we went to my parents' house for lunch. We came back home, she took a quick nap, and then we went to her other grandparents' house so I could work out in their home-gym.

By pre-Adelyn standards, today was nothing. I would've thought it was boring. I would've thought I got absolutely nothing accomplished. But with Adelyn, lugging around a car seat and scheduling feedings and managing to keep her from screaming in public, I feel victorious. Empowered.

Just finding some sense of normalcy, no matter how mundane it may be, feels so, so good.

I don't know if it's because I'm young or because I was totally not expecting to be a parent any time soon, but all I want as far as my own life right now is to feel like myself again. I know I'll always be different now, that's not up for debate. Just doing things, though, that I used to do everyday--like putting on makeup or visiting friends or reading the news--with a baby feels like more of an accomplishment than any A on a paper, any job opportunity or experience I had when I wasn't a mother.