The Race is On

Everything just moves so quickly in a baby's life.

I always promised myself that I wouldn't hold my children back because I wasn't ready to move on. But man it's hard. Ridiculously hard.


Especially when, instead of years, a baby's life is measured in months. Just a few small chunks of months at a time. And not only do the months move quickly, the changes and the milestones just go whipping by like you're on one of those high-speed rail cars in China. Or Japan. Or whereever those are in the Far East.

The way I see it, their whole personality develops and changes, literally, right along with the size of their clothes.

Like buying something in 0-to-three months. This is what I call, the "nub" phase. Where mainly they eat and sleep and cry and just plain old exist. Sure they look around and maybe begin to recognize you, but mainly it's a one-way street. You're sitting there "itchy-gitchy-gooing" away at them and they're looking at you like you're nuts. But however sleepless and shredded you are, nub phase is cute and cuddly and yummy nonetheless.

But then they grow out of "nub". And they're smiling and laughing and sleeping through the night and by golly me, the three-to-six clothes are on. But this one goes by so fast you almost completely miss it. I seriously almost did! By the time I pulled out three-to-six he was already in almost six-to-twelve. It's like nub to six months in 6 seconds.


The more I think about it, the parallels between their clothing sizes and their personality development is uncanny, really. Because as we changed sizes at three months, he had grown up more than just physically. He was sleeping through the night. Time didn't seem to drag on anymore because everyone was sleeping. And I say drag on because when you're not getting any sleep it seems like it's forever at the time, but then all of a sudden you're at three months and you get mad at yourself for being angry and bitter for not enjoying every second of that non-sleep.


Anyway, after nub phase is over and there's sleeping going on, then you're on solids (and subsequently) here come the 'stinky' poops and bam! He's sitting up and doing that military crawl across the room. And as fast as I pulled out those three-to-six clothes, I put them away and said bye-bye onesies.


Six-to-twelve felt like it was going to last longer because it is a six-month span, after all. But we're already close to 8 months now and I have no idea where the past two months went. I was cleaning out the older Poops' closet, and there was still a straggler shirt in there labeled "12 months" which went directly over into Mini's closet. Any day now, he'll fit that.


Zip zip.


For Poops, we're into the 2T phase. And up until 2T it moved quite quickly. The early months, of course, then the 12-to-18 where he started walking and using a big boy cup and wearing cute big boy clothes and kicking the soccer ball around and talking and understanding everything we're saying and eating with a fork and spoon.


Sigh.


18-to-24 months, his vocabulary quadruplified. He's actually joking around with me. He knows what's funny. He's serious. And he's hilarious. His personality is my husband. I know now, after so many phases and so many months, who he is. Because he's telling me.


This year is big for him. He is older. His clothes are bigger. There will be sentences, and counting, and letters and potty, and school starting next month and the purging of 18-24 month clothes out of his closet (see?) and as of today, a big boy bed with a real pillow and covers and responsibility! At the ripe old age of 2. (Pictures of this to come! They're awesome! I documented every moment of it, but I left the camera in his room and after lots of excitement followed by crying at the realization that this really is his new bed and he has to sleep in it and after lots of mommy and daddy coaxing and story reading because I've found that he already doesn't accept change well, I will not dare go in to get it. He finally is napping soundly in his new big boy bed.)


Anyway, I think it was the great Ferris Bueller who said it best. "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."


Sometimes I wish that for just a few minutes, my life could be a DVR. And I could just hit pause.

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This week's Summer of Me Winner of the $30 Giftcard to TitleNine sponsored by Janeen at Our Story (thank you Janeen!) and a teeshirt from One More Mile goes to a non-blogger! Clairanne!! Congratulations!

And the winner of the DirtyRed tee is: Dena at SunEGrl Loves to Shop! Congrats to you!!

The Race is On

https://babytealeaves.blogspot.com/2008/07/race-is-on.html