Whenever one of my friends whips out their elegantly scrap booked baby shrine, shows me their kids first hair cut clipping, or proofs from their latest professional photo session, I do not feel guilty. I'm not a baby person, never have been. While others mourned the end of breastfeeding and infant car seats, I cheered the 10 month milestone of my kids being able to hold their own bottle and sit in a regular chair at the table. My goal has always been how can I get them to be as self sufficient as possible - in hopes that they'll leave me alone long enough to update this damn blog (obviously failing on that front as well since my last post was May).
Parents of grown children always lament to me about how childhood is fleeting. "Before you know it, you wake up and they're off to college." My typical response is a hopeful, Really? Promise? Maybe if I close my eyes tight, and click my ruby slippers together, when I wake up I'll be off this carousel of monotony that is my life - breakfast, park, lunch, ride bikes at park, dinner, bed - round and round I've been going for 5 years. My kids are endlessly demanding of my attention, it's a wonder I can even breathe. Sometimes I can't wait for them to grow up and move onto that next phase of maturity, like riding the bus to school or finding their own apartment.
But this summer I may have had a change of heart. The boys and I spent 3 weeks visiting my Mom on the east coast. She lives in the same house where I grew up since I was 7. Our wonderful neighbors are still across the street keeping as close a tab on my kids as they did on me during my teen years. Except now I'm watching their children, who I babysat, get married, graduate from dental school, and have babies themselves. How did that happen? And where does that leave me with my non existent baby books and lack of professional photos? Maybe those empty nesters speak the truth.
Overnight I feel this sense of urgency to commit everything about my kids to memory. How can I capture these moments so I can be reminded exactly of how they were at this time? Kind of like when you get a whiff of new baby smell, it just sends you back (Okay, so I don't hate babies and I'm a little sentimental). Lord knows I cannot rely upon my current brain cells to handle this task. This morning rather than being bothered to throw the Cheerios out of Gregory's car seat and into the garbage, I ate them. They were stale and I didn't care. Don't judge.
Charlie is now 5. I take comfort that no matter what stage he's at - past, present, or future -he'll be smarter than me. Even I can remember that. He casually offers up observations like, "Mommy, I'm no detective, but that cloud formation sure looks like an upper and lower case 7." I just cannot believe he is mine, let alone a kid. I also know he'll always be funnier than I am. On one of our many side of the road emergency pit stops, Charlie was doing his thing and said, "If the fire chief drives by, I bet he'll think there's a firetruck over here because of how big my stream is." Did I mention humble, too.
But it's when I think about Gregory, at 2.5+ years, that I become truly desperate. He is at this stage of unbelievable innocence and pure love; still very much a baby that needs his mama yet on the cusp of growing facial hair. When I am going out or dropping him at school, I always say, "Give me a kiss." To which he responds, "And ew (you) give me a hug." As I walk out the door, there is an urgent plea, "Wait Mommy, I need anudder hug. Oh yeah, and kiss, too." He hugs and kisses me again and says, "I wuv ew. Be carefuw, Mommy." He is sweetness personified.
He is my last baby and about 15 cases of diapers away from becoming a mouthy 5 year old who rolls his eyes at me and tells me how 'annoying' I am. I can't say I can recall the specifics of Charlie at this age. There are vague memories of a sweet boy with blond curly hair and the vocabulary of an English professor. Though in my defense, I had just popped Gregory out. I was so sleep deprived Charlie could have been speaking fluent Russian and I wouldn't have given it a second thought. Sorry, Chuck, if only I had kept a baby book. I guess you'll have to settle for a blog entry.
