Not for long, and not forever.

I read this post at Ask Moxie recently and smiled wryly. Oh, have I been there. I have SO been there, lost in the haze of newborn and infant days, wondering what the hell I had gotten myself into and daydreaming about running away from home, preferably to a sidewalk cafe in Europe.

I didn't comment on Moxie's post, because I was pretty sure mine was not the answer that mother needs to hear: it doesn't get easier, it just gets different. During each phase, just when you think you cannot bear anymore, it will change. Nothing is for all that long, and nothing is forever.

Though my days as a new mother were somewhat dark and hazy, mottled with extreme sleep deprivation and the unfettered frustration of colic, they almost seem sweet to me now. Because now that loud, screamy baby is so long and lanky that it is hard to snuggle with him. Now he doesn't always tell me when he wants to scream. Now the days are numbered when he wants to be seen in public with me. I don't have the stressors of his babyhood, but I also don't get to spend the majority of his day with him anymore. I miss him.

Today I picked up my baby today from his preschool and we drove to the big kids' school to pick them up. I carried him to the school gate, and he wrapped his little legs around me and threw his arms around my neck and laid his head on my shoulder and I thought, "not for much longer." Not forever. He's already 40 pounds now, and soon it will be hard for me to pick him up at all. It's beyond that point for me with my six-year-old C., who is close to 80 pounds now. My eight-year-old is lighter but just too gangly. So B. is my only child I can carry now, and not for much longer. Not forever.

It's almost cruel to have stepping stone sons that remind me daily of what comes next. Firstborn doesn't need a lot of tucking in anymore, and he reads himself his bedtime stories. He runs off to sleepovers with nary a backwards glance. He'll hold my hand sometimes, but not at school. And not, I am sure, for much longer. Not forever.

Soon C. will follow his lead, and finally my Baby B. So, while I can, I will carry B., and hug him closely, and cherish every moment of that little head on my shoulder, of that little body that crawls under the covers next to me in the early dawn hours and burrows into my armpit, of those little feet in footed pajamas.

Today, as I was trying to compile our annual photo calendar for grandparent gifts, I found a picture of B. from not even that long ago. He was in his baby stance, standing in a diaper, sucking his middle two fingers. I realized that I didn't even notice when he stopped sucking on those fingers -- a habit he had since infancy. It was one of my favorite things, the way he sucked those fingers. I didn't even notice when it went away.

I wanted to tell that mother, Not for long, and not forever. But she'll find out soon enough.