Time Keeps On Slippin’ Slippin’ Slippin

Time keeps on slippin’ slippin’ slippin, into the future… Steve Miller’s lyrics from Fly Like An Eagle seem to play in my head on constant loop these days. I feel like I am literally grasping at the sands of time as they pour through my fingers. I try so hard to hold on to these moments while my girls are small, but the harder I try the faster they slip away.

When K was a baby I feel like I was much more in the moment, enjoying each stage as it came without really thinking of those that passed. But with Sydney’s arrival everything feels different. It feels like I am living in fast forward, and even though I try to enjoy the moments as they happen, I am constantly aware of those that just passed. I already miss the previous stage.

Now-a-days Syd is alert, bright-eyed and beautiful, with a toothless grin that melts mom’s heart. She’s discovering and soaking in the world around her, just like a baby should. But that sleepy, snugly stage is waning and I find myself wishing I had more of it.

I attribute my yearning to a number of factors, the first being that I have a big baby. There’s nothing wrong with her size, and please don’t think I am judging a baby’s size. It is merely that she barely seemed like a newborn to me. She was born 8.4lbs, a nice healthy baby. But she packed on those rolls quickly, and while I love her chubba-wubba thighs, at 6 months old she is just shy of 19 lbs and already in 9-12 month clothes and even some 12-month hand-me-downs from big sis. She never even had a chance to wear some of the adorable newborn outfits I carefully saved. Even when shopping for new clothes for her, I am saddened that those tiny sizes have already passed.

Suddenly when Syd was born my K, she wasn’t a baby any more. She is now a little girl. She’s so smart and has an beautiful heart, but she too is growing too quickly. I always thought mom was nuts for threatening to put “bricks on our heads while we slept to keep us from growing.” But I feel those words welling up in the back of my throat as I look at my girls. I want to keep them small and angelic. And yet as I watch K grow into this great little girl, I know in a blink of an eye baby Syd will be there too.

I have always said two was my limit, and after the pregnancy I had I can’t imagine going though that again. But knowing this is the last baby of mine who will wear these precious outfits, sleep peacefully by my bed, coo and laugh just for me. It tugs at my heart more emotionally than I ever believed it could.

It isn’t all rainbows and butterflies. Babies cry and preschoolers whine (a lot). But as irksome as those moments are, even they are fading and changing as Syd learns to self sooth and sleep through the night (a beautiful thing) and K moves from whining to dishing out the sass. A friend recently said this of her baby on Facebook, “This is ridiculous. After he has been awake for an hour, I start wanting him to be asleep. After he’s been asleep for an hour, I miss him.” I could not have said it better.

I started a project on the day Syd was born. I knew the days would be fleeting so I decided to take a picture of each of the girls (at least one) every day of Syd’s first year. I am proud to say that in her 196 days, I haven’t missed a day. Some are dark and grainy because I realized only after putting her to bed that I hadn’t captured that day, but they are all there. Some day, when the girls are bigger I hope these pictures that tell a story of their early days will help my heart to let go of the yearning for them to be small once again.

For now I try everyday to be in the moment because even when the day is crazy, stressful and exhausting, this too will pass. Someday soon they will be big, and I will miss the snuggles, the wonderment, the discovery, the innocence and yes, even the crying.