On having babies...

So excited for all the new babies coming in our ward! It has gotten me to thinking... When we're expecting, laboring, and delivering, we think we're having a baby. And we are. But we are also having:

1. a toddler,
   
2. a pre-schooler,
   
3. a school-age kid,
   
4. a pre-teen,
   
5. a teenager,
   
6. a young adult,
   
7. a for-real grown-up!

All packaged at first in a tiny little bundle. Everybody says it, because it's true: they grow up so fast. Before you know it, you don't have that little person any more. You have someone new. And before you can really process what it means, you have to let them go and make their own lives.
I've said this before: I was a much better mother of little children than I am of teenagers (and soon young grown-ups). With newborns, there are things to learn, but you can read the books or watch other mothers and find out how to dress, feed, diaper, etc. If you have to, you can set the baby down, and it stays there! But before you know it, they become mobile and verbal, and then they start asserting their own wills, and you're off and running! As little ones get bigger, so do their problems and issues.

Much as I love my growing family, I miss the little people who used to inhabit my house. I miss holding and kissing them. I miss their funny ways of talking. I miss the spontaneous puppet shows under the piano and the dancing to Raffi tapes. I miss the giggles. Of course, I don't miss the tantrums, the diapers, the hauling them in and out of car seats...


I guess that's what becoming a grandparent is for.