To stop time...

I have been feeling a desperate need as of late to soak up as much time as possible with L. To etch into my memory every cute little mispronounced word or phrase and every tender moment. To bottle them up and pop a cork on them so that in 10 years or 20 years or 30 years I can pop the top and relive these moments as I am living them today. To preserve and protect them from erosion by passing time. To keep this raw emotion intact.

Or better yet, can I please just pause him here, just for a little while longer?

I just know that I am going to blink and he is going to be growing, growing, grown.

I rock with him in the chair, chest to chest, his head on my shoulder, and his feet rest on my shins and dangle down between my legs...Can this possibly be the same baby? The same baby whose head, just yesterday it seems, fit in the palm of my hand? Whom I could hold on my chest with his butt cupped in one hand?

I am once again feeling so overwhelmed by the swift passage of time...

This morning he is standing in the hallway, repeating something over and over as I am in the living room getting ready for us to leave...I thought he was saying basketball, so I bring him his basketball, only to find him pointing at a ladybug and excitedly repeating

"bakey-bug, bakey-bug!!!"

"Yes bud, that's a ladybug"

he points up to the light "Up high!"

"Did he come from up there?"

"Yeah!"

You are getting too smart, my little peanut.

Too smart and too sweet...

Saturday morning we were snuggling on the couch watching some cartoons, as we always do on weekend mornings, and he turns to me out of the blue, puts his hand on my face and says "I wub you, mama" and kissed me on the lips.

The first time he was on the initiating end of that exchange...

I wub you too, L, more than words can say. Surely more than I ever thought possible.