She can take several steps in a row before she falls down. And she’s desperately trying not to resort to crawling anymore. She just wants to walk.

I can’t believe it! I have no baby anymore, in my opinion. Thank goodness her hair is still soft and fine baby hair. And she still has a fat baby tummy. But everything else is going from baby to toddler faster than I realized. I can’t believe this time last year, she wasn’t even born yet!

Here are some things I will miss about never having a little baby:

• Being excited to choose a name and picturing how the baby will be before it’s born
• The way they can be wrapped up into such contained little bundles in their baby blankets as newborns
• The funny way they stretch and yawn and make squeaking noises
• How they kick their legs when they are excited because they have no control over them!
• Tiny baby washcloths
• Tiny little onesies
• Tiny little shoes . . . you get the point
• Buying newborn sized diapers
• When strangers stop to coo over your newborn and go on about their own kids when they were newborns
• The baby falling asleep on your chest and breathing in rhythm with you
• LONG naps
• Putting the baby down and not worrying she will move, because she CAN’T
• How much you are needed

Things I will NOT miss:

• Breastfeeding (yeah, OK? That’s just me)
• Not being able to go to sleep when I am tired because the baby is awake!
• Being scared of dropping her in the tub
• Newborn crying jags, when they are just “working out their nervous system” or something, and howl for no reason you can stop
• Carrying a baby carrier everywhere
• Being covered in spit-up
• Poopy diapers
• Scrubbing really, really messy highchairs
• Seventeen loads of laundry per week
• Buying $50 worth of super cute baby clothes and then forgetting to put the baby in them until she is too big!
• Getting my hair pulled all the time by grabby little baby fists
• Other parents asking “How much does your baby weigh?” and saying things like “My, she sure is a chubby baby!” or “Wow, she sure is long and skinny, what a stringbean!” It makes me want to say “Yeah, she’s still ten thousand times more beautiful than you, so there!”

I will miss having a little baby, now that Catalina is pretty much one. But I look forward to the girls getting older, and learning even more about their personalities, having real conversations with them, doing more cool stuff and travelling with them, watching how beautiful they look as they get older, seeing what they love to do and what they don’t.

All that stuff to look forward to!