Dear Number 7

Dear Number 7,

Tonight is the last night I held you as a three-year-old.

And I’m sad.

You won’t have any recollection of this, but when we read a story before you went to bed, I let you sit in my lap just a little bit longer than usual. I couldn’t kiss you enough.

The skin on your cheeks is still so soft. It’s still baby skin. I just wanted to feel it as many times as I could.

I wanted to soak up as much of your babyness as possible before you wake up a four-year-old.

Because I already forget what your two-year-old babyness was really like. And now that you are on the verge of your fourth birthday, I am wishing I had appreciated all of your baby moments more.

I am wishing that rather than rolling my eyes and sighing heavily those times you wanted me to pick you up when you were eighteen months old that I would have anticipated this moment tonight. That I would have scooped you up with a smile. And held on tight.

It’s going so fast.

And I’m afraid that a year from now, I’ll forget what this feels like.

When I look at you compared to your brothers and sisters, you are still little.

And when I was coaching a swim meet today and you came walking across the deck through a sea of swimmers, you looked even smaller.

When I asked you why you were on the deck and you told me, “Because I wanted to tell you something, Mommy. I wanted to tell you that tomowow on my buthday I don’t want to take a nap,” well, I couldn’t help but smile.

You want so badly to be grown up.

And I want so badly for you to stay little.

Tonight after we finished reading a story you lay down across my lap, and I scooped you up and held you like a baby, just like I did when I used to nurse you when you were really tiny.

“Are you still my baby?” I asked you.

You looked up at me, smiled, said yes, and then you grabbed onto your blankie and started sucking your thumb.

Thank God.

I’ve said that I’m looking forward to this next stage of my life. To some independence and the ability to focus on myself.

And I am.

But I can’t really imagine what life will be like without having a baby in it. I definitely can’t remember what it was like without you in it.

So even though you will be four tomorrow, even though you aren’t so tiny anymore, you are still my baby.

And no matter how many birthdays you have, you always will be.

 

 

 

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