Why I'll Always Be Two Steps Behind

To my littlest boy,

Tomorrow you are two. I’ve been thinking about this fact a lot the last couple of days because truth be told, I’ve not quite wrapped my head around the fact you are one and have been for a whole year. Since you arrived it feels like the laws of time have shifted. Sometimes I go to pick you up expecting a baby and there’s a toddler in my arms, I fetch you a toy from the toy box and realise that developmentally, you’ve outgrown it. And sometimes I hear a little one talking, proper words, sentences even, and I catch my breath realising that it’s you. This began the very moment we met, when my hour-old baby was suddenly two days old, my two-week old suddenly a month old. I was aware of it every-time I tried to put you in a baby grow that you’d suddenly grown out of, every-time you hit a milestone; clapping, crawling, walking, running, jumping… time runs away and it feels like I’m always a few paces behind. But this feeling, this simmering panic that my baby is passing me by, has taught me to slow down. It has taught me that time is so very, very precious. That if you want a cuddle, or to read a book, or to show me a car out the window, then nothing, no household chore, no outstanding email, no pressing work enquiry will ever, ever triumph over that. Over you. My beautiful boy. By the rules of this new law of time, you may well be sixteen ‘next week’ but today you are still one. And so this evening, as I tuck you in to bed, as brief as I know this will be, I think I’ve caught up.

Happy birthday Squish.