Today was my first day of school, and thus I spent the morning hugging and how-was-your-summering and feeling moderately smug superiority directed at the panicked 1Ls milling about. And all through the day, his face flickered in and out of my field of vision, bright brief flashes, the Northern Lights across the expanse of my open mind. Free of him, I longed for him. It was refreshing to miss my baby.
I love to kiss the corner of his tiny mouth, where his cheek is so smooth, like a firm plum. When he puckers that mouth in displeasure, when he frowns a deep frown and thrusts out his lower lip and threatens tears, it breaks my heart. His father’s sister can’t bear it when he makes such a face. He is particularly good at manipulation.
His skin is so clear, his face so open when he’s asleep, or nearly asleep. I have walked him and his brother in our new double stroller every day since we got it. Jack sits up straight, riding high in the seat, and directly below him swings the newborn seat, rocking like a cradle. Liam gazes at me, seeing me upside down, or gazes past me into the sky. I don’t know if he can see that far yet, but he sure seems to see something. His eyelids will grow heavy, his darkening eyes become glassy, his face slack, and I marvel at the beauty of him. I cannot get it perfectly in a picture. They never come out right. If I could only capture the sweetness of that tuft of hair at the crown of his head – .
His legs are bulking up. A recent well baby visit reveals that, like his brother, his major spitting up has affected his growth not a whit, and he is the largest he can be while remaining on the normal growth charts. He is much too long for me to cradle him in my forearm while nursing – I once could hold his diapered bum in my hand, but now my hand reaches only to his lower back. He cries like a newborn still, but sprawled across me he is moving into Baby, fat and filled out and stronger every day.
Today when I came home from school at lunch, I fed my older son a meal that he ate up with gusto – rare for him. I put him to bed, and then fed my No Longer Newborn Baby in the nursing glider. After he’d had his fill, I propped him up to practice sitting, and he smiled wide at the sight of me. And then he laughed, a full body chuckle. And I laughed to hear him laugh, and he laughed to hear me, and we guffawed back and forth for a good three or four minutes, at which point I killed the moment by trying to sneak away to get the camera, because I really wanted to catch one of my son’s first laughs to hear again and again.
It is good for me to miss my children.
This is so sweet, and it gives me hope that I’ll see the good in missing mine. Enjoy your time to just be you at school this year!