Goodbye to Babyhood

We're starting to hit milestones around here. Potty training is long done. All the cloth diapers are washed a final time and packed away until the day we need them or I'm strong enough to let them go. 

SP is in preschool and loving it. Her tumbling skills are starting to look like actual tumbling moves. 

Still, this week it all hit me at once: she's not a baby anymore, she's fully kid. 

In the early hours of Tuesday morning, I awoke to SP getting sick. As we lay together on the futon all night marathoning cartoons, I looked at the side of her face. I saw the long lines where rounded cheeks had been. 

In that moment, the baby disappeared and I saw her. All girl, no more baby. 

It's been four years of diapers and babies and toddlers, of constant physical demand on my person, and in that instant, I realized it was over. 

Late nights of sickness and bad dreams will still pepper the route, but a chapter closed when I wasn't looking. 

It's hard to let this last chapter close. I'm mourning it's end as I rejoice in some of the freedoms of this next chapter. 

I can have conversations with both of my girls now. Actual conversations. 

Life doesn't have to revolve around nap time. 

Everyone is old enough to do some measure of chores and entertain themselves to varying degrees. 

I can sleep in. I can sleep all night. 

I've struggled with feelings of guilt over the ease of these things. When so many others are drained, how can I enjoy a restful night in good conscience?

But, the answer is staring me in the face when I look at my few baby items squirreled away and mourning their disuse. 

Because I have a different cross.  My cross isn't stretching myself out over many babies, it's stretching my heart over the lack of them. 

I'm working on embracing the gifts of my cross unapologetically. I'm trying to slow down and just be. 

Sometimes God throws a little stomach flu the three year old's way to get you to do just that.