he became a grown up, and then there were none.

Peter is growing up.

I walked into his room to put away some laundry the other night and gasped when I saw his big long body stretched across the crib.  He’s getting bigger every second.  He’s no longer nursing.  He’s starting to say words.  His golden baby locks are almost getting too  long to not cut.  He’s flashing his iron will.  He has a sense of humor, he’s funny and he knows it.  He is climbing on everything.  He’s making mischief, but he is golden.  Really, my pride and joy. 

I’m beginning to see why last children are always babies in their moms’ eyes.  I want to hold on to his babyness with all my might.  I don’t want this moving, walking, climbing, waving, cuddling, giggling magic to melt away into a grown up.  I know that what is to come is beautiful and miraculous and fantastic in it’s own unique way, but something about Peter being our ultimo makes me want to stop him growing up, to forever keep him my baby.

For heavens sake, I already miss who he was yesterday, and the day before and the day before that.  I miss last week when he’d sit in his highchair during dinner and fist his food (now he insists on using a spoon, very in-adeptly). I miss two weeks ago when he wasn’t 18 months, not old enough to go to nursery at church, the only two hours all week that I had him all to myself.   I miss last month when he was still nursing in the mornings, giving us both a quiet moment before the day came crashing down.  I miss those first days when he started saying mama.  I even miss those dark quite moments nursing in the middle of the night that sometimes I didn’t love too much in the moment.  I miss those first steps, that speedy crawler, that pudgy baby in the bumbo, that smiley coo-er on the changing table, that little newborn captor at my breast, that tiny ball on my shoulder, that new slithering body first swimming through the water, landing in my arms.  Breathing his first breaths into my eyes.

But time just flies. 

This tiny thing:

 

Becomes this;

and then this:

and now this:

Look at him looking out the window clutching his cars.  He’s going places.  He’s growing up.

One of my favorite board books is called 10 Little Babies by Gyo Fujikawa.  It counts down from 10 babies, each page with adorable picture of little babies doing silly things that one by one take them out of the story.  Lately I can’t read the last page without getting a little choked up.

I know Peter’s pretty far from being a grown up, but I also know that time will do that tricky thing where it will fly and then one day I’ll be staring Peter in the face, eye to eye because he’s as tall as me, and it will hit me that he’s really not my baby anymore, but a full on grown up.  Then the only little babies I’ll have are the ones pressed into my memory when I stop to gather them up and savor the moments.