the last day of September already.

this month brought her to us, and its close makes me sentimental, wary, resistant…as if the turn of the calendar might make her vanish, too, ephemeral, something only dreamed.

perhaps it is because she is my last baby, and i know this smallness will never be granted me again. perhaps it is because she looks a little like her eldest brother, fuzzy brown head, one eye half-cocked and peeking, and i am still and forever raw and fearful, over-protective. perhaps it is simply because it is autumn and the leaves are falling, melancholy and woodsmoke in the air. perhaps i am a mess of hormones, is all.

before she was born, i’d say quite happily to anyone who would listen that i’m not really a baby person. i love the age that Oscar’s at, love the interaction and the playfulness and the language and the give-and-take of learning limits. what i remembered of O’s infancy was mostly the months of colic and my own exhaustion, my sense of helplessness and bewilderment.

i forgot, though, that in those moments i still felt the magic of his newborn-ness, still mourned the passing of his two-week and four-week and six-week milestones, because i knew they would never come again.

my daughter will be three weeks old tomorrow. i think we have thrush, and the fatalist in me is poised to welcome colic like a bad party guest once her due date rolls around. and yet, if i could freeze these days, stay here in this weary, blurry, blessed baby state where her head smells milky and sweet and her small body curls into me at all hours, hot and soft and mewling…oh, today i would.