The end of babies

My BIL and pregnant SIL visited over the Thanksgiving weekend. We welcomed their visit as an opportunity to unload the baby items that we still have that haven't been yard-saled, Goodwilled, or given away. (For years, we expected no nieces or nephews would materialize at any point in our children's own childhoods. We were wrong, but it's not shaping up to be a Kennedy-size extended family by any means.)

It's (going to be) a boy, so it was especially poignant to wash and fold all of the remaining baby boy things. I did find that I could not part with this outfit:

I mean really, how could I? :-)

That little fleecy dude turned six two weeks ago. He loves Nintendo more than life itself and likes to create puppets by drawing pictures and taping them to plastic silverware. The ensuing puppet shows are lengthy and sometimes make sense. He loves to draw elaborate poster-size pictures but never colors them--he's all about the line drawing. (A future architect?) He likes to dance but refuses to sing (although he can) and instead he talks. non. stop. He also loves and protects his baby sister (who is NOT A BABY, so she says) when he is not torturing her.

Giving up his last remaining baby clothes was highly symbolic, because it signifies with near 99% certainty (so says my friend Mirena) that we are DONE.

For me, knowing I'm done is completely an intellectual exercise. I simply cannot do it again, but in my heart I'd always love to cuddle another baby and snuffle another newborn baby head. The feeling of tickling little feet in footy pajamas, patting a diapered bum underneath terry cloth and snaps, and getting a gummy grin covered with sweet potatoes--these are always things I'll crave until I hopefully have grandchildren someday.

Rosie has been waking up several times a night the past few days, however--reminding me, do I crave another two years of THAT? Not so much.

The thing is, whether you have one or two or ten kids, they will eventually grow up and you'll be done with babies. No getting around it. My choir friend whose daughter just got married told me that she often wishes she could take her little girl out of the old photos and hug her again, just once. *sniffle* I've been hugging my own children a lot more since she said that.

Children get bigger and take up more space, and they become way more expensive at the same time, but on the plus side they begin to resemble something like rational people. I'm looking forward to enjoying the next phase while also looking back at the past more than a little wistfully.

In the immortal words of that formerly ubiquitous song "Closing Time"--"Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end." Well, it's true, isn't it? :-)

Haven't posted in a while...

I was just sitting here and my favorite parenting message board is down so I thought I'd type some random drivel. I have toyed with making this a more personal blog, but then my next thought is always "Who the hell cares what I have to say?" Indeed. I feel this is true and that personal blogs are 99% boring. Allow me to join the fray.

My children are sitting in the next room eating their lunch (peanut butter and jelly, baby carrots and a cheese stick.) Rosie is not dressed yet despite the fact that I gave her her clothes to put on. It's 11:15 and Ian has to catch the bus in just a few minutes. Afternoon kindergarten is annoying only because they have to eat lunch early. They get up and eat breakfast early and seem to be rampagingly hungry by 10 am, so the early lunch doesn't bother them.

Afternoon kindy is good for me though because it means I get to sleep in. It is no great secret that I am not a morning person. Left to my own devices and despite the fact that teenager-hood is long in my past, I will go to bed at 2 am and get up at noon. These days Eric feeds the kids and sets them in front of various mind-numbing TV programs and then leaves for work shortly before 8. My room is feet away from the family room and so in a state of semi-snooze, I can hear what they're doing while not actually standing up and "looking alive" as my mother would say. I roll outta bed around 9 or 9:30, depending on how quiet the kiddos are.

My friends tell me I am super lucky because their kids insist that they wake up at the buttcrack of dawn. I fear that my kids are just well trained to accept this form of benign neglect and that luck has nothing to do with it.

At any rate, thank God for the L-shaped ranch house that allows me to supervise from bed for an hour or so every morning. No amount of guilt that I give myself during the day will get me to change my habits because I've been trying for years to be a morning person and I'm JUST NOT.