So, Whit is two. Seems like yesterday we were at Verrill Farm at Grace’s very elaborate second birthday party. Poor Whit had to make do with Bread & Circus cupcakes and a few dear friends in the kitchen. Company was excellent, the planning a little less detailed than Grace’s bash. It’s amazing how differently I feel about them at age two. At two Grace felt like a little person – I re-read yesterday the letter I wrote to her on her second birthday, and she was clearly such a little personality already. Whit is clearly himself, of course, but he’s just so much less fully formed. I’m sure at least half of this is my own self wanting to keep my last baby a baby, and it may also be a boy/girl thing … it’s certainly driven in large part by how much less verbal he is than she was. But I still think of him as my baby – I still call him that, I still carry him most of the time, I seem unready for him to be launched into the life of his own independent childhood! I’m not aware of this unreadiness, by the way, intellectually, but when I reflect on the way I treat him, that is the emotion that seems to be manifest. It also seems odd to think that at Grace’s birthday I was six months pregnant with Whit – it’s hard to imagine being pregnant now.
Well, I guess it’s official: no more babies in the Mead-Russell house. It’s a cliche and it’s also powerfully true: the days are long, and the years are short.