Anand is eleven months…

Anand is eleven months today; just one more month of being a baby. He's not walking or talking yet -- but so close. He can stand for close to a minute at a time; he'll constantly cruising, and will occasionally take a step or two before falling down. And when we talk to him, he tries to talk back -- he's constantly vocalizing these days. Our house is getting quite noisy.

I'll be happy when he can walk and talk; I'm not really a baby person. I hate the sleep deprivation of infancy (which my kids stretched to a solid nine months, and travel and illness have meant that we still get perhaps one night in three of solid sleep -- which is a vast improvement, but still). I'll be happy when he can tell me what's bothering him, instead of making us guess. Anand's already laughing and clapping and trying to make jokes, I think; it'll be so much fun when he can actually do that and have us understand.

But all that said, and even though Kevin and I are really quite sure that we're done having babies, it is a little bittersweet, knowing this is our last month with a baby. Every once in a while there's a little flicker of...maybe another? When I was young, I thought I'd have a big family -- four or five kids, maybe. Am I really going to stop with just two?

And then I remember how much I hate pregnancy, and remember how little writing I manage to do around a baby, and remember than I'm already 39, and that we'll be sixty before Anand graduates college as it is, and that little flicker gets firmly extinguished.

We are and will be family of four (plus Ellie), and that is just fine. No more babies for us. But I think now is a good time to go and snuggle the baby, while I still have him.