My life is one big crazy to-do list right now, this huge list of things that must happen or I’ll ruin Christmas. No pressure there or anything. The Baby and I just went out into the briskly cold and cheerful day and decorated our porch FINALLY – my husband hates putting up the outdoor decorations before his birthday and this weekend was just INSANELY busy (we saw SANTA! SANTA! I KNOW HIM!) and it didn’t get done by The Appropriate Person – aka MY HUSBAND – so I had to, for the millionth year in a row. (Isn’t that the saddest thing you’ve ever heard?) I asked The Baby how the porch looked and she gave it an appraising, critical look.
"The porch looks AWESOME!" she said. And then she high-fived me for good measure. I’m going to get her to judge all of my efforts from now on: she is unreservedly on my side and everything I do is AMAZING.
Sometimes it occurs to me with this sudden shock that she is NOT a baby anymore. In four months, for example, she will be three. Three! That’s a big kid! And there’s no new baby on the way, which has never happened before – I have never had a child this age and not been pregnant, and parenting an old toddler/young preschooler without feeling exhausted/queasy/hugely fat is an odd sensation. Mostly I just feel bereft, though, with songs about a baby playing constantly in the background, this feeling of never again.
And then I make some cookies.
I don’t know what the next phase of my life will hold – undoubtedly lots of baking, but as for everything else, I don’t know. There’s a chorus of lovely, supportive people in my life saying that I should write a book but that would involve prolonged effort and I don’t like THAT. (which is why, I suspect, that I’m good at life with small children – our attention spans match.) I have no desire to go back to school, no desire for a career, no desire to do much of anything besides being at home with a small child I love and when that period of my life gently ends, will I look back on it as my one vital decade? Boy. That’s a depressing thought.
So I guess I’ll end up writing that book. It beats wringing my hands and weeping for the next 30 years, which is what I’m making it sound like RIGHT NOW. Maybe I’ll be very good at it. Right now though, I would love to rest my hand gently on my own belly while all those Christmas songs are playing, would love to look into my new child’s slate grey eyes for the very first time. Someone, my husband always says gently, had to be the last child, and The Baby will be ours.
Next year, The Girl will be nine and The Boy will be nearly seven and The Baby on her way to four and so this is my last year with a houseful of small children at Christmas. This is our last Christmas with children eager for magic and crafts and cookies and every day they get older and older and Christmas gets closer and my to-do list won’t finish itself, no pressure there or anything.