time is but the stream...

At some point in the last month, Monkey stopped being a baby and started being, in his words, "a real grown-up". This as he handed over his "binkie" to us for the last time, handed it over "for all the babies to have."

Now he's learning to use the potty. This morning he woke up, used the bathroom, brushed his own teeth, got dressed and went downstairs--all without any help. (Well, all right, I helped him pull the turtleneck over his head, and I helped him turn his underwear around so they were no longer backwards.)

As we move from one season to another here (and maybe that's wishful thinking, too, but spring is coming soon), I keep thinking about the passing of time, how hard it is to remember sometimes even how old I am. I do a lot of, "Wait, was that the summer of 2006, or was it the summer after that? Where did we live when you last visited?" Things like that.

And I realized that so much of the last seven years is measured in child events. That was the winter that David worked part time and I spent the whole evening every evening sitting on the couch nursing Jabber. That was the Christmas right after Monkey was born. And the refrain from everyone was always this: "Enjoy it because it goes so fast."

So fast.

One day you have a baby. The next day it seems he's running away in a pair of snowshoes.