Maeve and the Babies

Maeve likes babies.  In her imagination.  In real life, she finds them both fascinating and terrifying.  She's still sensitive enough to noise that a crying baby sends her running to hide under our dining room table, which is her universal safe place.  But a non-crying baby makes her sort of fascinated, she wants to teach the baby things, explain how her toys work, why Wall-E and Eve are in love, etc.

Our friends stayed with us for a long weekend, and their 11 month old provoked both of these reactions in Maeve.  She didn't want to just sit and play with him for very long, but in little spurts, she'd bring him a toy or test out to see where he was ticklish, just every now and then.  And of course, a lot of table hiding.

It's funny, she's not yet asked me if I will have another baby, I think to her it seems the natural order for her to be the one and only around here.  Once she's in school and ALL her friends have younger siblings, I imagine it will be more of a thing.  But I'm grateful I don't have to defend that decision to her yet; I'm not looking forward to that one.  I like babies, too, very much, but I also like sleeping.  And having my hands free during the day.

One of the tiny perks of adulthood is you really do get to make these kinds of decisions for yourself, so I am grateful for the freedom to make that choice, just as I'd defend anyone else's choice of how many kiddos they want to raise at once.  So don't think I'm making an argument for having one child, because I'm not, it's just how things are working out best for me.