Moving into toddlerhood, he will always be my baby

By Dr. Heather Bozant Witcher
Young Adults

As we sat listening and rocking to the bedtime story, somewhere deep within, there was a voice that told me to snap the picture. The last picture snuggled up with my last baby, in the last moments that he would be 1 year old.

His hand covers half of his mouth and his eyes have a sleepy, hazy look as he leans into me. I look exhausted; hair frazzled from end of the day and southern humidity and allergy eyes peering into the camera. But there we are … for posterity.

   After the bedtime song, I moved into his room as he body grew heavy and his thumb moved into his mouth. The next day he would be 2 – and, for him, not much would change. For me, it meant the end of an era and the beginning of the chaos of full-blown toddlerhood.

But that night, I held him close and savored the snuggles. As I know all too well from my almost-4-year-olds, those snuggles come less frequently with each passing age.

The following morning, I went in to wake him and tell him happy birthday. Sleepy as ever, his first words were “no,” with emphatic insistence and pulling his loveys over his head. He wasn’t ready to start his morning.

And that sums up my youngest in a nutshell – everything in his own time.

One of the joys of this past year has been watching him develop into his own person. He’s definitely the youngest, and his chorus of “and me” insists upon his being included in everything that his brothers are doing.

Most poignantly, he’s showing himself to be the most loving and caring of the bunch. Whenever anyone has gotten hurt, he’s the first to come over and offer a kiss or ask for a hug. He’s also the St. Francis of Assisi of our three, and hasn’t met an animal that he doesn’t want to pet or kiss. Once he’s out of his crib, his first order of business is to find the dogs: “pat, pat, pat,” he says, happily toddling into our bedroom to find “Annie-puppy” and “Lottie-puppy.”

  These are the memories that I’ve been focused on saving – those moments of personhood, when it’s clear that he’s carving out his own space in our little family and in the world.

Those memories and that quickly snapped and imperfect photo are particularly crucial for me with Syd. In my Timehop memories, I have images of his birth. Presumably, my husband took the photos showing our heads aligned, his slimy body against my face, against the backdrop of the blue sheet. But I have no recollection. My first memory of my baby isn’t even on his birthday; it’s the day after, when I met him in the NICU.

It’s a startling contrast: I distinctly remember the birth of my twins and I can visualize the operating room, the sensations, the bustle in the room as all the teams prepped for and took over care of the twins. But with Syd, there’s a blank.

So, despite the imperfection of that last 1-year-old photo, I’m glad I remembered to take it; just to start filling in the gaps, and to remember the moments, in all of their honesty.

Dr. Heather Bozant Witcher can be reached at [email protected].