Playdate..

 My four year old had his first playdate tonight with his best mate Nicholas, a bright lad with pale orange hair and super blue eyes. Nick’s mom took them to McDonald’s for dinner and then took them to the tumbling class they both attend. She texted me pics of both boys being so happy and so silly you can see the wriggle lines in the pics. My eyes misted over.

I thought of that tonight as I looked in on Q sleeping in his crib-cum-toddler bed in his blue and green and orange nursery with letters of his name dancing merrily on the wall above where he lay, swaddled in his Cars bedding, cuddling a semi truck. Time marching on again. Taking my boys with it.  Taking me along as well with all new aches and pains and alarming grey hair (which I defiantly colored tonight) and bags under my eyes and these old fat hands. Weird. Horrible. Inevitable. We just painted Q’s room, so it seems. Set up the cheery nursery with rocket baby bedding, a painting of the solar system in blue and orange and glitter from Target, a rug of spacey looking robots and rocket ships…Now the changing table only holds stuffed animals and the bins hold neglected things like bibs and burp cloths and receiving blankets and tiny socks and onsies. It’s time for that evil change thing. Time to move the boys in together. Paint the walls something a little more subdued. Change up the theme to cars and trucks or sports or boats. Sea creatures, maybe. Buy new beds, twin sized. Something to accommodate taller skinnier little boy bodies instead of plump short babies or toddlers.

Damn.

I woke in a mild panic at one am or so…and had to look at pictures of the boys as little babies. Already the vision-memories are fading for me. What did they look like right at birth…2 weeks..6 months…a year…even 2. I wish I had taken more little videos. We never do that. Frank doesn’t see the point but I do. I will try to do more. And take more pictures. I do try to focus on them when I hold them. How it feels. What their skin is like (warm sweet sweaty custard). How they smell and even taste. The texture of their hair. The exact shape of their fingernails and the lines in the skin on the bottom of their feet.

I wish sometimes I could absorb them back into me and just keep them in my cells again. I wouldn’t know them the way I do now..but they’d stop this relentless growing away from me! Worst thing about having kids, in my opinion, this growing up and growing away. I thought maybe I’d be able to handle that exquisite self torture the second go-round of motherhood but it is even worse sometimes..paired with the growing awareness of my own demise.

I want to sop up all these memories and consume them like drippy egg yolk on toast. 

There is more. There is always more. This weekend will be the "camping" trip in the renovated caboose at the wildlife park. I am sure it will be maddening and lovely and silly and exhausting.

I will be in it. Totally.