Where have all the babies gone?

Derek and I are enthusiastic anti-packrats. To be truthful, we're rather tyrannical and dogmatic about it. If something in our house does not have an immediate use, it had better look out because it's on its way out. There are a few exceptions to this rule, like my wedding dress (although, in my defence, I did try to sell it, to no avail), and Derek's shelf-ful of class notes dating back to his first year in English Lit.

So it is no surprise that as soon as our children grew out of clothes or toys, we have striven to find each item a new home, usually by passing them along to friends or acquaintances. Even some furniture gets kicked out: a few weeks ago, after I found a new dresser for our room, we graduated my dresser to Maïa and Maïa's to Solanne, and the change table that had been holding all of Solanne's clothes graduated to the curb (someone picked it up within an hour).

The net effect of all this purging is that we have nearly no baby things left in our home. It's all kids' stuff now. Gone are the teethers, the exersaucer, the highchair, the cloth diapers (hurray!), the tiny sleepers. So when I look around, I wonder where did our babies disappear to? It's the strangest thing; when I signed up to have babies, I knew that they would become children and then adolescents and then adults, but I never really considered that the babies would be gone, forever. In theory, I miss Maïa the Baby and Solanne the Baby, but in practice, I must admit, that I'm really enjoying this part. More than I had imagined I would. And I think that the part of me that misses the babies is mourning what might have been; because, in fact, I found those times quite trying, tiring, and troublesome.

So while I will miss Solanne's baby sounds (her "L"s are becoming a real L sound rather than a W sound), and those magical Baby Signs, I am embracing the wonderful little girls that they are and that they are becoming, every single day. I guess that's the beauty of raising children: it's the becoming that is the most exciting, even more so than any one moment.