Has it really been a year, already?

Fletcher turned one. It’s really hard for me to believe.  I mean, I’ve watched it happen before my eyes, but it’s gone so quickly!  I remember it all so vividly.  I tried so hard to cherish his babyhood, knowing from experience how quickly it can pass.  I’m so grateful I can be home full time and I’m the one who is the first face he sees in the morning and the last face he sees before he goes to sleep at night.  That I can be the one to dress him and feed him and change him and change him again. And as a result, we have this way of talking even though he can’t speak yet.  But how can he be one already?

It seems that Carter starting school and Kiefer in Preschool has made this past year go at warp speed.  The lunch making, bus stop drop, drop off and pick up drill made this past year a blur.  I remember clinging to Fletcher on Carter’s first day of school telling him not to grow up too fast and so grateful I still had two, nearly three still at home with me.  The paradox of a Kindergartener and a two month old.  One leaving for the day, going on the big school bus, the youngest not quite sleeping through the night.  (but his momma being ok with that because she knows those night time feedings are the only solitude and mother-son alone time bonding that she would get!)  Then later in the school year, Carter discovering he has a loose tooth while Fletcher was just getting his first teeth.  The same ones!!  And at Carter’s kindergarten graduation ceremony, I shed tears when they played the country music song, “Let them be Little”  I’m really trying! I’m trying to cherish these times. But they slip through my fingers too easily.  So leading up to his first birthday, I was preparing mentally that it was time to let go a little.  He’s starting to crawl, getting busier each day and exploring more and more, which is all good.  But then he decided to wean himself, two weeks before his birthday.   I was not quite ready for that. But obviously, he was.  He’ll always love me, of course.  But it’s over. That mother-child bond, the link to pregnancy.  It’s come to a close.  Now it’s onto the next chapter.  It’s probably best that he cut himself off.  And the sweetest thing is that every single time I’ve given him a bottle, the sweet boy has offered me a sip.  It makes me giggle and  makes me feel a little bit better.