Corey is selling our baby backpack on Craigslist. We recently handed over our biking trailer to a sister. Ansel now needs to use both hands when he tells people how old he is and only one hand to push away my incoming kisses. The stepping stool to the bathroom sink is pushed aside, dejected. Ansel's mid-day slumbers are now verging on the point of extinction. A few weeks ago he woke from his possibly last ever nap, found me busy in the laundry room, and at the exact moment that I was thinking to myself that he seemed so big, he exclaimed, "I think I grew in my sleep because now I can see what is on the counter!"
It must have been so. The next day when he pulled on his pants, his bony ankles were in full view and at this moment, there is an ever-growing pile of clothing in our garage that cannot be handed down in-house. I have been mourning. Mourning and savoring the final 52 mornings that I have Ansel all to myself. And suddenly, everything naive and silly, misconstrued or mispronounced, is a gift and a phrase to be mourned because I know that tomorrow he will be older and wiser. Darn.
He hasn't said "I am Your Threeth Child" in a few weeks. I cringed when Emmy corrected him. "No, you are the 3rd child," she instructed.
'Please, let's let him be the threeth child for as long as we can,' I silently pleaded.
Corey reads to Ansel every night before bed and their latest biblio-conquest was "The Trumpet of the Swan" by E.B. White. I knew that Ansel was ingesting the content when he asked me one morning if we could go find a cygnet. As it has been 5 or so years since I read the book to the girls and the conversation was a bit out of context, I had to ask him what a cygnet was.
"Duh, Mom. It is a baby swan."
I knew that he LOVED the book when he would count down the minutes until Corey got home. One day he lamented, "Oh, I wish I could go back to the day when we started reading the The Trumpet of the Swans. That was the best day."
"I know, Ansel. It is so much fun to start a book and know right away that you are going to love it. It is like finding a new friend. There are so many books that you are going to love."
Oh, I wish I I could go back in time as well. Or at least freeze it for a while. Reality nudges me into the future and I woefully acknowledge that a chapter of my life is closing. I knew from the moment that I had my first cygnet that I was going to love this book of Motherhood. And I can't wait to see what is coming next.
One of our last mornings when we can wear pajamas until noon and build forts in big boxes
One of the last times that Ansel will draw his numbers backwards
One of the last times that Ansel will tell me to put the cat in time out because she is terrorizing the fort
and taking chunks out of Ansel's fingers
One of the last cardboard-o-glyphs expressing displeasure with the cat
5 comments:
I'm getting a little taste of this nostalgia myself. I already have a storage bin almost full of clothes that are too small and gone are Belén's non-mobile days as she started crawling forward last week. Pathetic, I know, but I'm feeling it, nonetheless.
I love the cardboard-o-glyph. It made me smile.
I absolutely love this post. I can't believe your baby is 6. You put it so perfectly- all of the sweet little kid things that will be missed.
I feel sad. How do I capture it and not forget all the little things?
Oh, you had to go and make me cry.
I'm sad too, but I try to think of all the "firsts" he and the girls still have ahead of them.
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