Things I'm looking forward to

This post may take me a couple of days to write, but I think it will be fun to look back on in a few weeks or months from now so it will be worth it. I'll even try to get Shaun to find sometime in his busy schedule to weigh in too.
There are so many things I'm looking forward to when Cecilia is out of this cast. Hopefully writing them down will make me appreciate them more when they happen. In approximate order:
1. Hug my daughter. She has this giant bar that gets in the way of me really being able to hug her. You can get close from behind, but it just isn't the same.
2. Give her a bath. She doesn't stink too bad now, but I can't wait to not worry about her getting really messy, or spilling milk down the front of her, or the giant blowout she just had. Not to mention the fact that she used to love them and would burn an half hour just playing in the water. On a side note, I have learned that most babies cry through their first bath (or more) after they get the cast off. Some moms think it is the shock on their skin, some think they are afraid of the water now because they haven't been in it. So while this first experience probably won't be all that it could be, hopefully it won't take too many to get there.
3. Set her down for just one minute while I run and do something. There have been more times than I can count when I'm holding her and just need to set her down for a minute and run in the other room, or even put my shoes on. Now I have to buckle her into something first, the chair or the stroller.
4. Get sleeping back on track again. She has missed more naps, woken up more at night, missed more sleep than I ever expected. I think this is the one thing that surprised me the most about this experience. I really hope she will take two naps again once she is more active. If not, I will cry. And no, she doesn't just need one nap. Any child who goes to bed at 5:30 needs two naps.
5. "Wear" her while I run an errand. I have this carrier that hugs her to my hip and I can't wait to use it again. I want to pick her up and run into the store for something quick, rather than get out the stroller, or dead weight a 21 pound awkward baby around. Like going to the library, it will be so much better.
6. Watch her roll over. She did this about a week before she got the cast on and we worked so hard to get her to do it. I wonder how long it will take this time.
7. Watch her learn to crawl. We wonder if this won't happen and she will go straight to walking because she was doing it with our help before the cast. But I see these babies at church crawling and I just can't wait to see Cecilia doing that too. Maybe then she won't whine so much when a toy is out of her reach.
8. Tickle her. This one is farther down my list than it will be on Shaun's because I can still reach under the cast and tickle her tummy (see this video). But she has this spot between her butt and her upper thigh I'm dying to get at.
9. Dress her in pants. This one is also farther down my list because I have a girl and putting her in a dress everyday for the past three months hasn't been that bad. Although it probably will change the way I look at dresses for the rest of my life, now I look at it wondering if it will fit over a cast :) But it will be so nice to have unlimited options to dress her again.
10. Use a nursing pillow. Let's just say nursing a baby in a body cast is not the most comfortable thing and my arm muscles have gotten a lot stronger. Perhaps I should have put this one higher on the list as it really will change our lives quite a bit, but I know it is short lived in the grand scheme and we have adapted. In fact it is hard for me to remember how I used to hold her and worry we will have another learning curve here.
11. Watch her learn to walk. Like I said, she was getting the hang of moving her feet in front of the other before the cast and it will be so exciting to see it happen again and see how long it takes her to walk. This is one of the things that are totally up in the air. Shaun and I talk about it often. We can't help but think it will happen quickly, but the doctor says this is one of those things that are hard wired into the brain and you can't make it happen faster than they would normally do it. Also if they were going to learn to walk while in the cast then they will come out and do it quickly. So the million dollar question is, when will Cecilia's brain tell her to walk?