Nineteen Months

We’ve sprinted from the starting line at one year, passed that middle benchmark all too quickly and are now dashing to the big number two. At least that’s what nineteen months feels like. We’re on the other side now, looking back towards one, but we’re too far gone. Two is so much closer, and I can’t help but see that number instead. It’s like a holiday, we barely pass out that last sticky piece of Halloween candy and I’m already arranging the Christmas tree and decorations in my head and planning our early Thanksgiving menu (because I haven’t been home for Thanksgiving in years… I’ve even spent a Thanksgiving dinner sprawled across the Los Angeles Convention Center floor eating nachos with my husband and nursing a sleepy, baby Aliyah in my arms, so yeah, we do it early now).

But this? It’s different. It’s a side of the numbers game that I felt was so far away, and I was okay with that. I know my kids are going to grow up… They already are. I know there will be moments when they want to make their own decisions, their own choices, that may differ from mine, and I’ll be okay with that too.  But I liked the fact that I could still use months to describe his age, and now I’m getting closer to using years. I liked the fact that I could say he just turned one and it was the truth. And now, the months are adding up and he’s about to notch off another year on his belt of Ages.

I think I may be putting the cart before the horse just a little, because this is more the rant a mother of a 23 month old should be spouting, but looking towards the next big event is just a part of my nature.

And then come the nights where both of my babies want to be rocked. So I start with the littlest wrapped up in my arms, the one Uhh-bsessed with holding my hand, though not even realizing that he’s got my heart plastered in the palm of his. And I rock. I kiss his boo-boos and take in the almost-not-there-anymore baby scent of his soft little locks. I let his free hand twist and grab at my skin until he’s off somewhere in dreamland yet still enveloped in each beat of my heart, and then it’s big sister’s turn. Her lanky body contorts on my lap until she’s not much larger then when this was the normal routine, her baby routine, and the moment I really notice the difference is when I stand to slide her under her covers and kiss her cheek for the last time of the night. And I realize, whether nineteen months or five years, still in diapers or ready to flee the nest, they’ll always be my babies.

You can read through the whole series, including the first year’s month-by-month here.