I Must Be Living In A Time Warp

"The cleaning and scrubbing
will wait till tomorrow
For children grow up,
we've learned to our sorrow.
So quiet down cobwebs,
dust go to sleep.
I'm rocking my baby,
and babies don't keep."

~Unknown (at least to me, I'm lazy like that.)

I have found myself pausing more and more often and just sniffing Giuliana's hair. Or gazing longingly at that diaper-padded tushie. Or smiling inwardly when she lets me feed her.(To my friends who are not yet mothers...just you wait. You may think I am weird and unbalanced now ((well, maybe I am, but that's another discussion)) but you will be thinking these same thoughts one day, trust me.)

I know my days of her allowing me, even needing me, to cuddle with her, rock her, are limited...and running out fast. As I previously blathered on and on (thank you for humoring me, by the way) about, my baby is growing up. A little bit more each day. And, quite honestly, it freaks me out a little bit. I look at that picture up there...it doesn't seem like that long ago. But it was quite literally a lifetime ago! Her lifetime. She is only about 1 month old in that picture. Now she is inching closer and closer to 15 months. Yikes!

What freaks me out more than just the fact that she isn't really a baby anymore is that that means that I am headed into the Frightening World of Living with a Toddler. I have to bring on my parenting A-game, so to speak. Up till now, it's been pretty much cake, I'll be honest. Yes, it's exhausting cake (hmmm, that metaphor sounded better in my head) but really, it's not rocket science to keep a baby alive. Feed them, diaper them, love them to pieces, play with them, put them to bed regularly...that's really all it is, folks. Oh, I know they look all intimidating...these helpless little bundles that Cry, and Poop, and Won't Sleep, and wouldn't survive if you took off to Rome for a week on a whim and forgot about them. But, trust me, you love them so much that really, it just comes naturally.

But toddlers? They are a whole different ball game. You have to start setting rules and boundaries. You have to actually enforce said rules. They need to learn things, like: the alphabet, table manners, how to use the potty, we don't eat yellow snow, colors, how to tie shoes, how to swim, how to color, no we don't eat dirt either. You know, Important Things! And then there are the Temper Tantrums (or, as they are now more politely referred to, "meltdowns"). Oh, G had a doosy the other night...it was Long, and Loud, and Dramatic. Ummm, add "a sense of perspective" to that list of things they have to learn. It freaks me out, in a rather big way, to be responsible for all of this. And it is more here than coming soon, if you know what I mean.

And then, there is just the fact that I won't have a baby anymore. Some of my friends are moving on to their second child. I just can't find myself there quite yet. I can't picture another baby in our family yet. Soon, maybe...but not yet. So, everyday, or as often as possible, I do catch myself cherishing those baby moments that I still have with her. Because, really, babies don't keep. And I don't want to miss it.