Saturday, February 23, 2008

When I wasn't looking

My oldest son, Bug, turned into a little boy.
I don't know when it happened.
It seems as though I put him to bed a small squishy baby and he awoke the next morning with long legs and a full vocabulary and I don't know when it happened.
I think there is an instant in time when our child changes from a baby to a child. Admittedly, there are years in between, when body's develop and brains mature, but there is an instant, when, as a mother, I looked at my oldest and realized he wasn't a baby any more.
He no longer has that baby smell, that heady mixture of milk, sweat, and spit up that combines to make a mother not murder her child, but to hold him close instead. There was a lingering spot behind Bug's left ear that held that smell longer than any other part of his body. I remember pressing my nose to it and greedily sucking down that smell.
Now he just smells like stinky little boy.
Boo still has that spot, harbored in the crevice on the back of his neck. I find myself wondering when it, too, will fade away and leave me only sweet memories of my baby boy. I wonder which morning I will wake to find my sweet toddler has morphed into a little boy overnight.
Oh, I still have Punk, but she's a girl, and smells different than my boys ever did. Not bad, just different.
I'm wondering if there will be a moment in the future when I'll awake to find my boys will have morphed into men, and I'll be trying to find some remnant of the little, stinky boys they've left behind.

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