The Fastest Years

This is the week. This is the week it happened. The time when I look back on with each of my sons that I wonder when they went from baby to the next stage. The time that sneaks up so quickly and becomes part of everyday life that it feels like you blinked and they went from being a baby who needed everything to gaining total independence. I missed this moment with my sons. It came too quickly and I didn’t know what to look for.

But now I sit here, having just given my daughter a bath where she sat up easily by herself with no worry from me that she couldn’t support her weight or would topple over. I sit here thinking of how last night she started crawling for the first time. And two days ago, she started to pull herself up in her pack-and-play and crib so she could stand up holding onto the railings and sides. The crib now needs to be lowered before bed tonight. I just removed the baby bath from the tub after this last bath. It was the one she used right after we brought her home from the hospital. Baby gates are going up. I just moved her earlier this week from her infant car seat to the next size up. She now sits in a stroller seat instead of clipping her car seat in to the stroller. It’s been coming, I saw it coming, but I still wasn’t ready. It started with the car seat and stroller but I knew as soon as bath time was changing that everything else was going to come quickly.

I swear after this moment is when I forgot with my sons what the baby stage was like. I didn’t remember till we had our daughter in my arms how fragile and dependent they are. It was a memory in a distant fog that I stumbled upon a few times when I was making her registry and racking my brain trying to figure out what I should get. I also forgot how much I loved this stage. Once she was here, I remembered how easy and fulfilling and how filled with absolute love each one of these moments are.

But here we are now again. It’s time to move on to the next phase again. I can’t believe I caught this moment. I’m so grateful I caught this moment. Too often these things happen in the mix of things and I sit there wondering how and when I missed it. It gives me a second to think and reflect on how small she once was and how she will never be that way again. But, it’s like catching a beautiful butterfly. What can you do with it? You want to sit and admire it for as long as you can but if you know you can’t keep it too long. This reflection is enough for me right now. Remembering all those times she was half the size of her baby bath and thinking about how today she absolutely loved to sit up and splash in the water. Everything is so new and exciting for her.

It goes quickly from here. Walking will come naturally, talking and the word “no!” but also sweet words like “momma” and “I love you”. I hope I catch the next moment when it comes. This beautiful butterfly that miraculously landed on my shoulder. There are many of these phases but saying goodbye to the baby stage is, for me, the most significant. It is so hard with three to get these moments, to collect them, but I know to look because I know how hard it is to think back and wonder when it all changed and how it all happened so quickly. It goes too fast.