It's coming up on Agatha's 1st birthday, this Friday, and I'm so sentimental about her now-distant infancy. It's seems like much more than a year ago that I was pregnant with her! I don't remember feeling this way with Henry. For his 1st birthday, we had a party with seven one-year-olds and their parents. It felt like we were coming up for air, resurfacing after a year of submersion in baby-world. By his first birthday, Henry was running (he walked about 3 weeks before his birthday) and already seemed like a little boy, not a baby. We were excited about what lay ahead and relieved to have the demanding baby months behind us. But now, maybe because I don't expect to have any more children, I am already nostalgic for my last pregnancy, for that unmatched, special feeling of carrying a child, and for my tiny newborn. Of course, this is all a trick of the mind! We can only live in the now and it is so wonderful having these fun little children. Partly, I think, we feel nostalgic for those tiny infants knowing later the distinctive personalities they become. Now that we know the 3-year-old, we can look back and see the seeds of that person in the infant. But when we were holding that two-week-old infant, we couldn't really know the person he'd become. I imagine this dissonance and retrospection just increases as your child grows and matures. Anyway, this ramble is just a taste of the swamp of emotions of being a mom!
1 comment:
Dearest mom Amelia, When Jill was little, most likely after she was one and I was seeing her babyhood fleeting, I would think, "It is not fair having a first baby and a last baby." It was sometimes too long and then not long enough. Ian was a darling boy, but very busy, but very sweet. Jill was a mellow, good natured baby. It is easy to understand why some families have more than two chidren; the time flies by, but then so do resources of time, energy and money and thus two is enough! However, I do remember those feelings and I bet a lot of your friends and cousins have had the same feelings. Love, Auntie Grace
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