Not a Baby Anymore
Posted by Arwen Mosher in Family on Wednesday, October 14, 2009 9:59 PM
When we were waiting and praying that God would send us children, I thought a lot about babies. Sweet cuddly babies, with rosy cheeks and soft hair. Tiny ones are achingly cute, literally: I ached when I saw one.
Eventually God blessed us with Camilla, and my focus on babies increased throughout my pregnancy and her first years. This year gave me another chance to immerse myself in babyhood with Blaise’s arrival.
I feel slightly silly admitting this, but in those years when I prayed for God to send us children, I didn’t think much about the fact that although they would start out as babies, our children would not actually *be* babies for the vast majority of their lives.
Last year I posted on Camilla’s second birthday about her asking, “When birthday coming over?” At age two, she didn’t understand the concept of a birthday and her syntax was funny, too.
She’s three now. Her limbs have stretched and her mind has grown, and except for the occasional mis-conjugation of a verb, her syntax rarely provides me with a funny story to tell.
In her two-year-old toddler self I could just catch glimpses of the baby she was. In her three-year-old self I can see glimpses of the toddler, but for the most part she is a little girl now. I understood *in theory* that eventually my baby would grow up, but the speed with which my defenseless seven-pound newborn has become a spirited thirty-pound child shocks me.
The good news is that as much as I love babies - and I do - I am enjoying having a little girl even more. As Camilla gets older I have more and more chances to understand her, to see the world through her eyes, and it is wonderful. Her third year has been a lovely one, and I can’t wait to see what this fourth year brings!
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