i am a mammal

Duh, right? Lately I've been thinking about it though, about how in the United States there is this big rush to make our children grow up and be ready for the world and be independent and leave home and start their own lives. Why? I didn't have children so I could rush them out the door. I have children because I love children, I love babies, I love newborns, I love toddlers, I love preteens, I even love teens! For a couple of years now I have been wishing we could slow it down, add a year of high school, give our children more time to prepare for college and the World. What's one more year? Why are we in such a hurry?

I have four children, currently they are 15, 8, 5, and 1. My oldest is so close to graduating and then college, she may or may not live home during college, even though sometimes she drives me bonkers I am in no hurry for her to leave. I know once she moves out things will be different in some ways forever, I don't need that, it's not something I look forward to. I know she will take the world by storm, but I see no reason to hurry. My youngest child in school is in kindergarten, she is on the bus with her big sister headed off to school at 7:05 am, she is stepping off that bus at 2:45. That's almost like a full-time job. She is happy at school and like her sisters before her she is smart and well-behaved, my letting them be their own person because they are their own people must be working out somehow. My baby is 14 months old. We are together all day every day. He is a breast feeding baby and because he is a little behind from the heart defect he was born with, he seldom eats much other food, but he is a great little nursling. I hold him when he naps and I take him in bed with me at night. I pick him up when he asks me to and I take him for walks and sing to him and play peek-a-boo with him and I carry him around so he can see the world at my height. I breastfed all my children, I cuddled and loved on them, read to them and sang to them, but it was this boy, my last child, who made me really embrace the mammal of myself. I have held him for all about less than a dozen of the nights of his life. Why? Because we are mammals, he is not meant to sleep away from me and I am not meant to sleep away from him. It doesn't feel right, how can I keep him warm and safe and fed if I am not right next to him? How can I know each little time he needs to feel my hand or nurse a little if he is not in my arms? (to be continued)