Melancholy

It's amazing the things that cause me to become overwhelmed with a wave of sadness: a little kid struggling to keep up with an adult, old photographs of my son as a baby, not an infant, but when he was about six months old and up because I didn't even get a chance to know him then and our life was so different then and I'll never know him again when he couldn't speak or when he was getting his teeth, or learning to sit-up, when he had blunt undefined baby features and wispy baby curls and chubby baby hands. I'll never have another baby again and my baby is already so grown-up. I wish I would have known him then like I do now. I was a better mom then, though. I guess because I wasn't having to guide and correct his behavior so much to help him be a the best version of himself that he can because he wasn't venturing out into the world without being strapped to my chest or in a sling.

It makes me sad to look at photographs of when we had first moved back to the area and bought our first home and had just gotten Stella and she was so athletic and sleek and energetic and full of herself. And now her waist has thickened with age, despite her daily exercise and her muzzle is getting white and she snores and creaks. And babies were not something we even considered and we were so carefree and didn't even know that we were. And we loved that house so much. We got to build it from scratch and everything was exactly as we wanted and we went to visit it every day, to the point that I started making and bringing cookies for the builders because they were so great about my ever changing mind. We could walk everywhere and used to walk through snowstorms to the grocery store and beer distributor and sit in front of the fireplace and Duke would always shovel our elderly neighbors' driveway without ever telling them. I would cook elaborate meals every night because I wasn't worn out as I am now.

So strange that we moved and bought this big house with plans for expanding our family (and the better school district). So strange that life can only be lived forward and understood in hindsight. Melancholy. I hope you leave me soon.