1. From practicing somersaults to copycat head bonking to desperately wanting to play Barbies, Alice’s world revolves around wanting to be bigger. Nothing makes her happier than being handed a spoon at dinner to feed herself like the rest of us; this is actually a great trick to get kids to eat! Some foods she outright refuses until she can shovel it in herself.

2. Over the past few months, Alice has really started watching Lucy. I catch her just staring at her big sister, absorbing every move Lucy makes.

3. Thursdays, when the girls are home with me, have an unspoken rhythm. We don’t get dressed, and tend to lounge around in the morning watching TV or colouring. It also means I’m more slack with cleaning up the breakfast dishes.

1-3 combined with Alice’s climbing abilities and her want to be big like Lucy have resulted in this:

Climbing into Lucy’s chair, putting on Lucy’s bib, and finishing Lucy’s breakfast on Lucy’s princess placemat.

I was engrossed in my computer a few weeks ago, and didn’t even notice what she’d done until I heard the wet chomping of milk-soggy Mini Wheats. Followed by choke-coughing as she drank Lucy’s leftover milk from the sippy cup without a valve she’s not used to.

I fight a daily internal battle: So happy to be done the newborn stage, and loving the girls’ growing independence. But sad Alice is growing up and Lucy is starting school and we are so obviously leaving the baby stage behind.

You can’t slow the march of time. But a camera and memories help preserve the now.

Stop growing and keep growing, my wee girl.

Our bed is up against a window, and the soothing patter of rain woke me at 4:22 a.m. Within minutes, Alice was awake. Hungry, chilly, a squirming worm in Eric’s arms, anxious to burrow against my belly and nuzzle into my breast.

This happens often. Some unseen force nudges me out of open-mouthed slumber; a gentle hand on my shoulder, and I’m awake, listening, before there is a need to. It’s happened with both my girls, at all ages.

For a few seconds each time I open my eyes, when the mind is a blank canvas before life is instantly painted on, I forget. I feel like…me. Just Carly. My body, my interests, my own thoughts, with no one else to consider.

And then I blink, and this life seeps into my skin.

_____

Do you ever look around at the world you have created for yourself and wonder how it happened?

There are days when I feel like I’m out of my own body. Pregnancy, so visceral and consuming when you are living it, seems like eons ago — if it happened at all — yet here before my eyes are two beautiful and healthy little girls. That I helped create. That came out of me.

_____

“I just LOVE Mumma!”

Lucy, my sensitive, emotional soul, says this out of the blue frequently. My heart tightens, elongates, lodges in my throat each and every time. I can’t cry because it upsets her.

“Oh, Baby Goose. I love you, too.”

“Mumma, I’m not a baby.”

“I know you’re not, Lucy. But that is my name for you.”

“You tell me to, ‘Stop growin’, Lucy!’”

“I do. Stop it. Right now!”

“Mumma, I will go to school soon.”

“I know, Honey. Not for another whole year, but very soon.”

“I won’t need you when I go to school.”

I pause, wondering how to handle this — inane toddler conversations can spin wildly toward the significant in an instant.  Lucy is suddenly very interested in her school, which is down the street. We have explained that school is only for girls and boys to go to, and not Mummies and Daddies.

“Well, you might not need me when you’re at school, but I think I should still stick around.”

She throws her arms around my neck, and gives me a “seximo” kiss (rubbing noses together).

“Mumma,” she whispers into my ear. “I will always need you.”

_____

I don’t think you can regret your children.

Sure, you can yearn for the time before they catapulted into your life, changing every aspect of it forever. I wish, daily, for more hours in the day. I want to reach back into time and shake the old me who had endless stretches of emptiness in her lap. I want to sleep more, hating 6:15 a.m. when Lucy and Alice are simultaneously whining from their rooms and Eric and I poke each other under the warm sheets to try and force the other out.

But would I ever not have them, in order to secure these things? Never. Would I change anything about how they came to be? Never.

_____

In those late afternoon/early evening hours, when the TV is blaring, Spencer is barking at the wind, and Lucy is clinging to my knees, Alice is on my hip, and I’m stirring a pot with flushed cheeks, time stands still. So often I clock watch, counting the minutes until Eric comes home and I can disentangle myself.

But others, I close my eyes and inhale. I try to burn the chaos to memory. I want to remember it all, this feeling of being needed every single moment.

Soon enough, like the past life I occasionally miss, this time will be over.

Anie, one of the women from my weekly Durham Mom’s Night Out group, is due with her first baby right about now, and is already thinking about daycare for her daughter — and rightly so.

She is only able to take four months off from work.

Can you click here to pop over to the Durham Region Daycare blog, where I’ve done a post with her questions, and share some advice?

Thanks!

p.s. — I finally finished Alice’s birth story this weekend. You can find it here.

It was the perfect late August day for photos: Slightly overcast outside and not too hot.

Karla is a calming, cheery, pixie-personality woman, and armed with a camera she is a dangerous lady: Her talent and demeanor result in just gorgeous shots, as these show.

Look at the outside colours. The sky. The grass. They are surreal. And the photo of Lucy — she looks like a porcelain doll. Her eyes just pop off the screen.

I was around seven months pregnant with Alice when these were taken. I was admittedly a little uncomfortable with the one on the couch — not being wrapped half-nekkid in white, but that the pics would turn out suggestive or something.

But then I saw the photos, and was so glad I trusted Karla’s instinct. They are beautiful and warm and such a lovely keepsake.

(The start of the third trimester is a great time to take pics like this, too. It’s that time when you’re cutely rotund, and before you get really big and clunky and the beloved stretch marks appear.)

Karla is a sweet friend I wish I saw more often, a frequent commenter here, a touching and humourous blogger at Untangling Knots, and lives in south Durham with husband Mark, son Nathan and pup Samson.

She specializes in family portraitures with her recently-launched Karla Cadeau Photography.

Spit bubble smiling

 Baby Power arm wavin’ smiling

Chillin’ smiling

Oh, oh, wait for it…

Hooray!

Coaxing these out of her is a lesson in throwing your inhibitions away: I “coooo” like a confused owl — or perhaps a drunk pigeon? — and “ahhhhh” like a bad refreshment commercial on repeat. She, however and obviously, loves it, though. And the reward for the ridiculousness? Priceless.