Today was a very important day.
Today, I registered my son for kindergarten. My baby. The last baby I'll ever have.
I remember when he was born and one of my sorority sisters from college, who had also had a baby that year, sent me a card that said "Welcome to the Kindergarten Class of 2010!" and I thought how far away that seemed. And here we are, almost six years later, almost there. It has flown by.
He was born two days before his due date. In stark contrast to the herculean labor I'd had with his sister (29 hours of it, including three hours of pushing plus a cartload of meds/interventions), the Racecar Man was born in just over three hours, about 10 minutes of pushing, and no meds.
He was an easy, sleeping, smiling baby. I had been so worried about having a boy. What if I didn't know how to parent boys? Worry melted into the sweetest, soft love the moment they placed him on my chest. What I felt was akin to the worst crush I'd ever had, multiplied by a thousand.
As he has grown, he has changed. Plump baby to sturdy toddler to skinny preschooler. He was climbing stairs at nine months, walking at ten. He talked early, his fine motor skills were better than mine when he was two. He takes apart everything he can find and his favorite toys have wheels on them. He knows how to operate the DVR and the Wii and how to put his own toast in the toaster. But he still crawls up on my lap to cuddle, he still hold my hand when we walk through the parking lot or on a busy street. He's scared of bees and positively heroic in the face of spiders. He is so very sensitive, incredibly naughty, and totally enchanting. I reach for his warm, heavy baby self and find myself grasping instead a tall, bony lad, all elbows and knees and ribs.
My baby. Who is not my baby anymore.
No more babies in my house.
