My friend Lindsay just had her second baby.  She brought little Evan over to my house at age three weeks.  He was the same weight as my daughter was when she was born – 8 pounds, plus a few ounces – but had already “beefed up” to ten pounds by our first meeting.  He was still teeny, to my eyes.  I couldn’t believe my 2 1/2 –year-old was once that small.  I propped my suddenly gigantic toddler on my hip so she could peer down at him; she eyed him soberly and silently, and then said “good night, baby,” and asked to go to bed.

Lindsay’s older son Ethan is only 14 months old.  My mother had her two children 12 months apart.  My friend Martha, a mother of five, has often told me “it doesn’t really matter if you have two in diapers versus one.”  I was always skeptical of this, especially after having my own child, and experiencing the daunting task of parenting just one at a time.  Granted, I am the only single parent in this sample group, but still. 

But as a watch my daughter grow and change, seemingly daily – I just measured her on the wall chart, and she’s grown over an inch in the last 3 months – I can finally understand why some folks would hasten to add a new baby to their families. I’ve mentioned before the not-groundbreaking observation of how fast time flies in the first few years of babyhood.  Seeing little Evan, his toothless mouth letting out that singularly infant-y squeaky cry, touching his tiny, tiny toes flexing under the blanket, feeling his fuzzy head that is still smaller than my hand… it all conspired to give me that ache that so many women feel.

Oh clearly, having two babies is extremely exhausting for all involved – just ask my friend Susan who has twins.  But I think every mother (and I’m sure a few fathers) has that momentary wistful thought of “now that I know how quickly it goes by, and now that I feel like I know what I’m doing a little better, I would be so much more present if I had another one.”  For me, just knowing that there is indeed an end in sight to those overwhelming first few months would help me cope better in a second round of mothering a newborn.

As I am forced, heels dragging, into the prospect of my daughter turning 3 this fall, and the requisite considerations of exposing her to social interactions with other children via daycare and dance classes, I mourn the end of our carefree, coasting first years together.  I look at the potty chair in my bathroom and know I have to start implementing that in the next few months.  I will have to invoke “the Binkie Fairy” to end her pacifier addiction.  I will have to gently urge my only baby into her next stage of being – even if it makes my heart ache just a little bit.

And I will stroke velvety newborn heads and sigh wistfully.

I don’t know if it was having her first goofy little ponytail that did it, but today, my daughter urgently wanted to take photos with my digital camera.  While I made dinner, she shot away, telling her animal friends to “say cheese!” 

If you look closely, it looks like she even captured a ghost in my kitchen.  Now, if that had been me blurred out, it would have been red, not white.  I’m kidding about the ghost, of course.  Sorta.

From Barbie to her dinner, overall, I think she got some surprisingly good shots (even one of yours truly toiling at the wok).  Did I mention she just turned 2 ½?  Yeah, I know I did.

Thank you for your kind indulgence…