Moment Of Sheer, Unadulterated Panic

I woke up this morning in the middle of a dream that I was pregnant again.  Where the hell that came from, I have no idea.  Unless it (possibly??) resulted from being happy for my taekwondo friend who's been TTC for years and finally succeeded.

And it isn't anything against babies per se.  I love babies. I just want to be able to cuddle the heck out of them and then send them home to their own houses with their own mothers.  After approximately eight straight years of having somebody (or multiple somebodies) in diapers and/or needing nursing or sippy cups or special food or extra clothes or naps and not being able to explain to me WHY THEY WERE CRYING, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, I'm done with all that.  Especially given the uphill battles we had with our special-needs son when he went through that infant-to-preschool age range with siblings two years older and two years younger to add to the confusion.  I'm honestly not sure I could go back through those years again without very strong medication.  Some mothers are great at juggling a houseful of kids of widely varying ages (a good friend has 6, ranging from college-age down to first grade!) but that isn't me.  To paraphrase the immortal words of Bill Cosby, we have three kids because we did not want four.

So, like I said, I had that crazy moment of disorientation when I first woke up, then reality set in and I remembered that any children I might be gestating would definitely be the result of a no-kidding Act Of God, at which point I calmed down.  And then went downstairs and drank two cups of coffee in rapid succession.

The ironic thing is that I have also been thinking a lot recently (and while awake!) about how hard it is to watch the kids I do have growing up.  For whatever reason, it doesn't hit me so much with the boys, although I think Thing One's first middle school dance next year is going to reduce me to a quivering puddle of tears, judging from my response to the pictures of friends' boys on Facebook from last night's dance.  I guess with the boys I always had in the back of my mind that Petunia was still little, even if they weren't.

Except that she isn't little anymore either.  She's 6, and a thriving, bouncing first-grader.  Something about her getting on the bus with the boys this year is really getting to me.  And she went to full-day kindergarten last year, too...guess something about the fact that I still had to drive her there and pick her up made it more like preschool in my head.  The bus is so...final.  She talks like a big kid, reads at about fifth-grade level, and has no more baby roundness (not that she really ever had much of that once she started walking)...she's a no joke LITTLE GIRL now who picks out her own clothes and has very definite opinions.  Thank God for the fact that she still loves hugs from Mom, or I would be undone.

So...apparently I don't want any more babies, but I don't want the kids I do have to grow up any more, either.  Except when they do some little-kid thing that makes me insane and I want them to act more like big kids.  I think I need my head examined.  Really.

Happy Saturday...