Jude was sprawled out in front of me for a diaper change when I saw it: the tell-tale, swollen white lumps on his upper gums that heralded change. New teeth. Already.
A wave of sadness threatened to creep over me. He’s growing up. So fast, so fast.
Prior to the eruption of teeth, a baby — even an older baby like Jude — maintains that sweet, soft look of infancy, in my mind. They may be crawling, pulling up, and saying “Da-da,” but as long as that pink, gummy grin is unbroken, my heart keeps them safely in the “baby” box. I admit to being absolutely smitten by babies who give wide, wet, toothless smiles. Flash me a grin like that and I am yours, kid.
I’m equally able to see those two bottom teeth and think, “little one.” The emergence of the first teeth is bittersweet, to be sure. But they seem to complete the baby cuteness, to somehow go right along with jumping joyfully in the bouncer or riding my hip and laughing as we drag clothes from the washer to toss in the dryer.
But those top teeth … those are the harbingers of impending toddlerhood. And toddlerhood means that my baby is slipping away.
It’s a strange, unsettled anticipation that finds me journeying through the last few weeks before my baby finds his footing and joins the world of walkers. I can’t quite put words to the mix of joy (“You’re doing it!”) and loss (“There he goes!”) that grips my heart as I watch the skills line up and a child inch toward the moment when, one day, he toddles from place to place. Having worried and fretted over a precious little one who didn’t achieve that milestone until nearly two, I have a keen appreciation for every detail that goes in to making that momentous feat happen. And yet, every time, it takes my breath away with all that it means.
Change.
Toddlerhood means my baby is gone. Forever. Toddlerhood means less time on my lap, watching my hands as they turn the pages of the books being read aloud to siblings, and more time on the floor, creating distraction and happy chaos that breaks the spell of even the most entrancing tale. Toddlerhood means losing the season of contended drifting to sleep in my arms and more protests that “I not sleepy!” Toddlerhood means shorter nursing sessions where I sing and stroke cheeks and more quick check-ins to soothe the inevitable upheavals of temper and frustration that accompany all that newfound skill and desire.
But toddlerhood also means pressing a crayon into a chubby hand for the first time and seeing the delight as he realizes that he made color on the paper. Toddlerhood is showing him how to fill a bucket with sand, then dumping it on fat legs and watching the joyful wriggle of discovery. Toddlerhood is Brown Bear, Brown Bear, and This Little Piggy, and dragging a blanket, or doll, or wood egg that has become, for one reason or another, precious.
It’s coming.
By the time the weather is warm enough for me to carry armloads of clean diapers out to dry on the line, Jude will be pressing his nose against the back door, begging to go with me. I will signal that it’s OK, and a big brother will swing open the door and let him out onto the sun-warmed patio, where he will squeal with delight at the sensation of bare feet encountering new feedback. But not for long. Within moments, he will be running after me, little arms pumping, then tangling himself in my skirt as I hang the squares of cotton that remind me that he’s not that big. Not yet.
Soon enough, my baby will have been exchanged for a toddler, and I will once again think that there has never before been a cuter one year-old, surely. But until then, I am basking in the last moments of truly little baby bliss. Enjoying the thud, thud, swish sound of his army crawl across the wood floor, loving his wide-mouthed, goopy kisses on my chin, laughing at the way he sits on the dog’s tail when he doesn’t want it wagging near his puzzle pieces as he plays. I am watching his toothless grin fade from memory entirely and memorizing lines of this new, emerging face before me, and learning to love not only the person he is here, now … but the one he will be tomorrow, as well.