Kyle & Owen, July 2006***
The photo above and the two below were taken one year ago. I know it is so cliche, and everyone says it, but really— I cannot get over how time flies. The truth is: I can barely stand it. I love every single stage and phase (so far at least), and I miss every single one too. I see these pictures and I recognize these bambinos as my own two boys — but the difference between then and now is just stunning to me. Last summer they couldn’t get enough of these strollers (photo below)… they’d push them around 24 x 7. The fun seemed to be simply in pushing them. Now just to push the strollers is not enough. This morning they had these same two strollers turned upside down on the floor, they had all their toy tools out, and were pretending to “fix the strollers!” with their “DRILLS!!!” After much, much busy action, when the strollers were finally “fixed!” K & O went upstairs together to get their babies. They got side-tracked though, and I found them in Owen’s room, “feeding the babies milk from bottles!” They were both sitting on the floor, each with a baby doll in his lap, pressing the toy bottles to the babies mouths. They said, “Look Mommy! We are feeding these babies. They were sooooo hungry. They were crying. Because they were hungry. They were not acting up. They were just crying because they were hungry. Because babies cry if they are hungry. They have no teeth. They need bottles!!!” As usual, they announced to me that “We are the MOMMIES!” (side note: this continues to fascinate me… for all the gender egalitarianism that we try to model and instill, they both still insist that they are the “mommy” not the “papi” when they play with their dolls?????). Anyway, I said, “Oh! Yes! And Papi and I used to feed you two just like that! With bottles! When you were little babies!” Owen said, “But we are not babies now! No!!! Because we grew big! We are growing and growing and growing! Now I am bigger!” And Kyle said, “We are grown up now! We will be a big man soon! Pretty soon we will be sixty just like MorFar! And we will be driving our own car! And we will be going to the restaurant — just me and Owen. Me and Owen both. Just us. And we will leave you Mama, but we will come back.” I had all I could do to not just fall on the floor in a weeping heap right then and there.
