One Year Blues

Ok, didn't I say I get "the itch" when they turn one? So, it is 8 days away from Jillian's first birthday, and it dawns on me this week, as she took her first steps, that I will never again see one of my babies take their first step, smile their first smile, blow their first kiss, say a first word. Never again will I smell the smell of MY baby. Everything that Jillian is doing now, is the last "first" I will ever see. It was the last time I will feel life, the last time I will nurse and nourish a baby, the last time my baby will need ME, to feel safe and secure. This is why I feel so guilty for wanting Jillian to hurry up and get out of this phase where I cannot leave the room, can't get a good night's sleep, and have to schedule everything around her. Why can I just not enjoy it? Oh, I know. I've done it five times. It occurred to me as I dropped three of them off at school this morning, and still, despite that, had two left in the van with me, that if we had stopped at Kara as planned, I would be driving MYSELF home and how glorious that would be! I wouldn't trade any of them for all the self freedom in the world, but I do occasionally wonder "what if?". Then I envision two years from now, how I will be dropping Jillian off for school and I WILL be driving myself home, and I am comforted. So, I say to myself, try to enjoy Jillian and just sit in the living room with her, holding her, playing with her. It is easy to type, hard to actually do when there is dinner to make, dishes to clean up, mounds of laundry, and a full work week to work that disables me from doing all this. I admit, I'm having a hard time lately. It's the hours at work, and I have no other choice.