How fast it goes. I mean, is it just me or does having a child somehow, as they say, warp the fabric of time? Loulou will be nine months old this month, but it seems like I only just had him. Used to be, six months was a long time. A year was a very long time. I remember being one month into my last and hardest year at the university, looking ahead and thinking I cannot take nine more months of this. At the time, nine months seemed like an impossibly distant point in the future – so much time and work between then and graduation. Today, I ran into one of the OB nurses who was present when I gave birth to Loulou. I thought, She will remember me, it hasn’t been that long. But she didn’t. And it occurred to me - she must have helped deliver hundreds of babies since then. It also occurred to me, nine months have passed and I’ve barely had the time to sort out my thoughts.

Can we slow it down a bit? I remember reading an excellent essay by Anna Quindlen, just before Baby was born, where she said, referring to her own experience as a mother, that she wished she had “treasured the doing a little more, and the getting done a little less.” The sentence stuck with me, and I vowed that I would not fall into this trap, that I would live in the moment. Yet, I’m finding it difficult. I find I’m always looking ahead to some new milestone that will suddenly make everything so much easier. When baby sits up on his own without needing me as a spotter, when he learns to pull up without falling on his head, when he finally sleeps through the night…

Perhaps what I didn’t realize was that having a baby would be relentlessly demanding. Very rewarding, but all-consuming. I imagine that time speeds by because I never have a spare moment to sit and consider how much time has passed. It’s like a job that lasts all day and all night, with no weekends and no vacation. It is often very hard, and sometimes I can’t help but wish for a moment for myself. I can’t help but wish Loulou would just get to the point of entertaining himself for 15 minutes, in a non-lethal fashion, while I relax with a cup of tea and a good book. Cedric said once, babies are great, but wouldn’t it be nice if they were part-time?

I know intellectually that the hard moments are, in fact, fleeting. That in a lifetime, one year of sleepless nights is nothing. I don’t want to wish these moments while my son is small away, but it’s difficult not to wish I could slow down and take time to breathe occasionally.

ah you've captured the essence of the paradox. I'm 14 years down the road, and I will say that I don't regret any of the time I spent with my kids doing nothing but hanging out -- but at the time sometimes it drove me crazy. I did try to live in the moment, and though it was hard at times, now I'm really glad I did (thus the sentimentality of my daddy blog...)

After all, we aren't going to fondly look back at our memories of the laundry one day...

Funny how they also remind you of your mortality. Like, you can see time passing as they get bigger. I try not to think about it too much.