In the Blink of an Eye

More than seven years ago, I decided I wanted a baby. I didn't give my husband much of a choice, but he was up for it. I wanted a baby. I pictured myself with a baby...an eternal baby, I think. I didn't picture having a toddler or a six year old or an adolescent...just a cute, cuddly, cooing baby.

I also remember thinking, and possibly even saying out loud, just after Emma was born, "Whew, now the hard part is over!" Was I ever stupid! The first couple of months did seem like an eternity, and I do remember scowling at a woman when I was trying to console my screaming infant at a restaurant when she stopped and said to me, "Oh, treasure this time!" But then something happened with the space-time continuum and the flux capacitor, and now my first baby is a very mature six-year-old and my youngest baby is turning five in a few short months. A five-year-old is most definitely NOT a baby. How did this happen? When did this happen?

When we were out at dinner earlier in the week, Sophie and I were discussing her next birthday party. ("Pirates and Princesses" is the theme, she has decided.) It was only then that I actually realized that she will be turning FIVE!!
Don't get me wrong, I love "five." Emma and Sophie are at such wonderful stages right now, and I am enjoying them so much, but I am not the same silly, igorant girl I was seven years ago. I KNOW how quickly they will go from being four and six to eight and ten and so on. So I am now consciously trying to take it all in and savour every moment of their childhood.

My grandmother Adeline was alive to see both of my babies when they were born. When my firstborn Emma was just a few weeks old, and I was exhausted and overwhelmed, I remember her telling me, "Just wait a year, and you won't believe how much she has changed and all of the things she will be doing." (I think it delighted her to no end that I had embarked on the great adventure of motherhood.) At that time, I wanted to wish away that first year. I wanted some sleep and a child that could talk back to me. (I got THAT wish!) But now I am not wishing any of it away. I am trying to enjoy every moment. Even the crazy ones. We have lots of those.

In story books, children are always children. Ramona Quimby will always be age 8 every time you open the book, and the next time we read her story, Annie Rose will still be having strops in the supermarket and throwing her lamb, Buttercup, out of her cot every morning...even though Shirley Hughes wrote it years ago. But this is not the way life really works. My career as a teacher before having children didn't prepare me either. Every year I'd get a fresh new batch of nine-year-olds...almost as good as an eternal baby.

I want them to grow up and be healthy, happy, wonderful adults... I just wish they didn't have to do it so fast.

"Growing old is mandatory; growing up is optional." ~Chili Davis