Does anyone else feel as if the last few months have flown by? Day to day they have dragged - my god have they dragged - but when you look back on the year as a whole it seems insane that it’s the end of July already. But I suppose that’s what happens when you essentially live the same day every day for 12 weeks straight.
So I’m prepared to partially blame lockdown for the fact that today, inexplicably, we marked Xander’s first birthday. Lockdown combined with the fact that with more than one child there’s less time to stop, drink it in, marvel in every gurgle and applaud every milestone so time sort of whips by like the train that pelts through the station at full speed as you try to count the carriages.
Even now, seven years on, I can remember in minute detail great swathes of Henry’s first year. Trips we went on, friends we saw, outfits he wore, funny things he did. The other day I caught myself thinking how nice Xander’s first Christmas will be this year. Apparently I’ve not managed to retain a memory from his actual first Christmas.
Sometimes I feel painfully guilty about this, then I remind myself it’s (probably) pretty normal and that we always knew three kids would be hectic and full on, so I don’t know what I expected.
One of the effects of lockdown is that I’ve not spent any time alone with Xander for months. Whenever he’s awake his adoring siblings are mauling him, dancing for him, working on new ways to make him giggle or hauling him about into swings, seats or a homemade creche they’ve devised with sofa cushions and soft toys.
But I do still try and snatch the odd moment with my smallest boy. He’s got a summer cold at the moment and the other night he was quite restless. I went to comfort him at about 9pm and while he calmed down quickly I found myself just sitting in the chair in his room holding him where he’d fallen back to sleep in my arms, gazing at his little pursed lips and the way his eyelashes kick up off the top of cheeks when he sleeps.
I know first hand how rapidly the years zoom by - the cliche of sand through the fingers is so true - and so from time to time I make a concerted effort to try and remember moments, or appreciate snippets of time, remembering this is the smallest they’ll ever be. Though to my irritation I have discovered you can’t make time slow down just by giving it a long, hard stare.
But as Xander turns one I’m excited for the next phase. My dad would warn against wishing time away, and I’m honestly not, but I’m also not mourning the end of the baby stage like some mothers do. People said I was mad for having a third, but I always said it’s not because I was desperate for another baby, more I craved the big family - the noisy house, the endless limbs, the incessant teenage chatter and the endless laughs. So it’s as Xander starts to roll his tongue round words (Dada only, of course) and little rays of his personality start to shine through that I get excited.
Xander is independent and fearless yet, oddly, pensive and considered at the same time. Like Henry did, he already gets the joke. He plays tricks and chuckles himself silly. He does things for a reaction and never tires of getting one. Yet like Bella, who was and remains a more serious soul, he knows what he wants and damn you if you try and stop him.
When I was about 8 weeks pregnant with Xander I had a prolonged episode of chronic anxiety. I thought I’d made a terrible mistake, that I was an idiot for thinking I could handle all this again - the baby stage, the sleepless nights, the feeding, the nappies, the carting clutter around everywhere you go, the total dependence of another human on me for every waking moment.
For two weeks I was terrified. Andy would come home from work and find the kids in the bath and me just crying on the bed. I phoned all my friends with three children and made them promise me it’d be ok. ("Thrice the worry, thrice the love" is one quote from Vix that I still repeat to myself regularly.) I called my very wise friend Nicky in floods of tears one night in total despair, begging her to tell me how to handle these feelings of outright panic. I had no idea antenatal anxiety was a thing, but there you are. It is and I had it.
But I convinced myself I wasn't committing to a lifetime of baby, but rather I was facing maybe a year of tough times - exhaustion, weight gain, chaos, hard bloody work, and not only would it not be as bad as I was remembering but that it would pass and be replaced by normal life, just with one extra passenger.
The feelings went away and, as if by way of telling me how ungrateful I was, I had a couple of scares later on in the pregnancy where I didn’t know if our little Xands was going to be here at all. The anxiety did return in one massive tidal wave of terror but, as it came when I was in labour, I didn’t have much time to entertain it.
And today I look at my sweet boy and wonder how we ever existed without him. Without his little gappy smile, his big open mouth kisses, his slap-slap-slapping across a room on all fours, and the little ‘Oh!’ sound he makes when something surprises him.
This post is nothing more than an indulgent ode to my baby as he officially exits babyhood and I barrel headlong into toddlerdom once more. I’ve got through that first year I was dreading and I don’t need to tell you I’ve loved it. Not the exhaustion, the weight gain, the chaos and the hard bloody work, but the rest of it.
I wouldn’t do it again, mind.
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