I'll Love you Forever

"I'll love you forever. I'll like you for always. As long as I'm living, my baby you'll be."

Word of the wise. This will be long and sentimental and probably a little TMI.
It's beginning to hit me. Hard. I no longer have a baby. We've been working on weaning around here. Caleb's just started taking whole milk out of the sippy cup and this morning he didn't nurse at all. And now that he puts himself to sleep in the crib he didn't even want to cuddle up with me. For so long we nursed, we rocked, we cuddled. Now Caleb is taking the sippy and only nursing a little, he hardly wants to be rocked, and he is ready to just go right in the crib and put himself to sleep. And I'm kind of sad. Happy for Caleb that he is able to do these things without me. Glad that I appreciated all those beautiful nursing and rocking moments. But WOW. It really does go by so fast. In the beginning it is so hard and then it gets better and you have this beautiful time and relationship through nursing, this closeness and bond that began when you are pregnant feeling every kick and movement. You provide nutrients for your baby from the time they are in the womb and it continues through nursing and now all of a sudden they are able to get nutrients elsewhere. And it's just the first of one huge step toward independence for them. Lately, Caleb has been standing on his own without holding on to anything. This may seem like a small milestone but it is huge because pretty soon he'll be walking. And like that, within a year, you go from having a helpless newborn who becomes a walking toddler. And you realize that you really do blink. You really do wake up one morning wondering where the time went. This all makes me realize no matter how bad the day gets or whatever hard phase we're going through it doesn't last but a second and it's so easy to miss out and not capture all the good and wonderful moments. No matter how much people tell you it goes fast, you don't really believe them. Until you wake up, you tiptoe into your sleeping baby's room in the middle of the night. and you realize, they aren't so little anymore.

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