The Trouble with Olivia

My heart confirmed yesterday something I had been suspecting all along. Something having to do with my first born, my only born. It had been sneaking up on me like a stalking cat; quiet, slow, methodical.....deadly.


The trouble with my Olivia is that she is growing up....

The trouble with Olivia is that she should look like this...
But she looks like this....
The trouble with Olivia is that when she sleeps she doesn't curl her feet and legs up like this...
Which gives me the sneaking suspicion that somehow she is no longer a newborn baby. How this happened in the last 17 months I am not really sure. How her eyes became unswollen and her nose popped back up from being squashed during the whole being born process befuddles me. Despite all efforts to keep a pacifier in her mouth and feeding her a bottle of warmed milk every morning she seemed to have found the loop hole in my hard work of keeping her a baby.

I was living in a world of denial. So she's smiling now, so she's laughing now, so she's sitting up now, so she's crawling now, so she's pointing at things now, so she's got teeth, so she's walking now, so it's her first birthday, so she is running now, so she is drinking milk instead of formula, so what that she is talking up a storm and following directions now....I still wasn't completely convinced of her grown upness.

Then it happened...

Ashley, Megan, Olivia and I were at Target shopping for such benign things as facewash and body lotion when around the corner came a stroller. And this was no ordinary Graco or Chicco. This was one of the fancy smancy ones that really aren't all that practical but will induce awes from women and mothers everywhere. It's like a bassinet on wheels. Which why in the world you would want to take a baby out of the carseat to transfer baby to this bassinet stroller just to have to move the baby back to the carseat later. I mean it just seems like alot of work unless you were planning to spend the entire day at Target, which seems as good a place as any for a new mother to spend her day. The whole "travel system" seems alot more convenient, but definitely not as cute. They are very charming little devices...a baby bed on wheels

Inside this cute little mobile cocoon lay a little bitty swaddled bundle of newborn baby. Asleep and still....right then and there after Olivia pointed at the little thing and announced "baby", I realized that the little thing in my cart was more of a child than a baby. My heart sank to remember Olivia those many months ago when she too was a helpless caterpillar looking bundle. My only thought was "How could this happen".

What happened next needs some explaining and it didn't really "happen" as much as some little innate switch was flipped inside of me.

Have you heard of the term or phrase "baby hungry". I have heard this phrase uttered many times by family members. I mean the meaning is obvious enough but it always sounded so stupid to me. It sounds desperate and lame and although I have been desperate and lame many times in my life I would never openly admit to it.

But maybe it's something only someone who has already had a baby can truly experience. One look at that newborn and I just felt this pang in my heart....."I have to have another baby". There was no denying that I was feeling "baby hungry" and that is exactly how it felt. I took one look and all of a sudden just felt starved, completely emaciated. My body felt like it was lacking something and longing for something and that "something" was that baby!

Don't get me wrong...Olivia is the cats meow, the bees knees, the cherry on top....I just realized for probably the first time that I have to have another baby. Because I just might die if I don't. I mean that's what happens if you starve right?

And since I am just hungry and not quite starving yet it's safe to say it's not gonna be anytime soon...

Let's just hope there is more Benveniste/Larsen genetic projects on the horizen somewhere!