Does this ever happen to you? You look at a picture of your child and think, “Wait. Is that ____? Really?!?! When did they get that big!?”.
That’s what happened when I saw this picture of Brooklyn. I’m not sure when this happened. I’m not sure when she completely stopped looking like a baby and turned into this big (ish) girl. She has always been tall, but in my mind, she’s just a tall ‘baby’, not a tall ‘girl’. Her second birthday is sneaking up on me. Time is telling me, “I’m here. I’m ticking away. Your children are growing, and your tiny face babies are memories of ago.”
That’s a hard truth. You won’t believe what words came from my mouth today…words I never thought I’d hear myself say. I was speaking to a new mom of just one baby, who is just 10 weeks old. As I cooed over him, I said with a voice heavy with memory, “Oh, this goes so fast. You blink and its over.” I SAID that. What? Who am I? When did I become the mom of ‘kids’ (not babies) and the mom who utters those words to tired moms who have NO clue what that means? I used to shrug that phrase off when well-intentioned women would say it to me. “Right,” I’d think. “Here I am, blinking, and everyone still looks exactly the same.” But, oh! How its true!
As for Brooklyn, there is no doubt: she is no longer anything baby. She speaks in sentences and communicates her needs. She can count to 5 and is learning her letters and the sounds they make. She loves the color purple, and has a fondness for anything stuffed. She loves ducks (both stuffed and real) and thinks everything (and I mean, everything) is a game. She giggles constantly, unless she is throwing her body down in a tantrum because you refuse to give her 12 cups of yogurt a day. She is quick to give hugs and kisses, and her first sentence every morning is, “Hi!!! I eat? FOOD!”. She carries around a disgusting, tattered blanket like its one of her limbs, detached from her body.
I spoil her rotten, and I don’t care. 😉
A Tale of Three Cities 