Done. Or am I? Okay, I'm done. Pretty positively maybe done.

Maybe if we didn't make such breathtakingly beautiful babies, this wouldn't be quite so difficult for me.







As Charlie nears his second birthday, as he becomes more "big boy" and less "my baby", and as Ella is inching closer and closer to the first day of kindergarten (ohmygod) I find myself in a sort of a pickle. I am torn between being excited that we are moving beyond the baby days, the diapers, the teething, and being sad to wave goodbye to this season of my life, with the snuggles and the first words and the milestones.

Some days are full of smiles and hugs and I-love-yous, and I think "YES! I could totally have three kids, no problem. This would be easy, because I am so on top of my life and have everything completely together." And the idea seems plausible, do-able, even like it might be a (gasp) good idea. After all, there is nothing more delicious than the smell of a newborn, or fat baby legs just begging to be kissed and/or eaten whole, or the way that they sleep on your chest curled up like a little tree frog. Then the next day Charlie slams his face into the wall while running seventy miles an hour and needs hugs at the exact moment that Ella needs me to wipe her in the bathroom and the oven timer is beeping and the dog just puked and we have to be in the car to drive to dance class in three minutes. And then the idea seems horrific, scary, and not at all like something a semi-sane person would consider doing, ever. After all, there would be nothing worse than adding MORE poop for me to manage, or reverting back to the twelve gallon diaper bag days, during which I feel like a damned pack mule, and let's not forget the reason that babies sleep like sweet, sleeping little tree frogs is because it is 3:45am and they finally pass out on your chest after you have walked around the house for seven hours doing the Baby Jiggle. And they wake up ten minutes later to eat. No thanks.

I think that in all of this I am mostly just mourning the loss of this whole time in my life: The Baby Bearing Days. I will never feel another little foot kick my ribs from the inside. I will never fold teeny tiny onesies with a smile on my face, anticipating a new little someone's arrival any day. I will never smell baby neck in the wee hours of the morning as it snuggles into my side. And I will never watch another baby of mine cross from baby to toddler with one drunken, wobbly step. But, I will also never have to heat up another bottle at 4am, or go through colic again, or know the pain of caring for two kids while recovering from childbirth again. So I guess I can only be so sad about the changing of the seasons for so long, because we are on to other things. Things that people with newborns cannot do, like take family vacations, or be thisclose to being completely done with diapers FOREVER (I think I gave myself chills just typing that...IMAGINE! NO DIAPERS!), or go out to eat without a newborn screaming at the top of their lungs. So while I may be sad about the end of my baby-making career, I know that we have already made two awesome ones that will give me more than a lifetime of happy things to come. And that will be enough.