They Say It's Your Birthday

The night Ben was born, he didn't cry. Layla came out screaming her head off, but Ben didn't make a peep. He just looked around at everything with his big eyes, yawning contentedly. When the nurse handed him to me, he looked at me like he knew exactly who I was and why we were there, reached out and grabbed my finger with his chubby hand, and squeezed. I swear I looked into his eyes and saw his soul.

Of course, that could have just been the drugs talking.

Tomorrow is Ben's second birthday and I can't shake the feeling that he's somehow lying about his age. In other words, to say that the last two years of my life (and the first two of his) have flown by would be an understatement of epic proportions. It's more like they passed like the speed of light. One day I was finding out I was pregnant, and the very next day I had a walking, talking, Toy Story-loving, block-building actual human being. He's a funny, sweet, occasionally obnoxious, always cuddly, little boy.

My baby's not a baby anymore.*
(*I feel it's necessary to the story to tell you guys that after I typed that sentence I stared at it for a few seconds, then proceeded to bawl my eyes out for the next ten minutes while cradling a visibly terrified Ben and whimpering "My baby, my baaaaby" over and over. I'm okay now.)

Don't get me wrong, Layla has grown up fast too, but for some reason, Ben feels faster. I think it was because she was first and I worried about things like hurting her when I changed her diaper, and obsessed over every milestone. The first time she farted, I wrote about it in her baby book. True story. It felt like there wasn't time or need to obsess over little things with Ben as much. By the time he came around I knew that putting a onesie on a baby in no way hurts them, and I understood that milestones are just basic guidelines, not set in stone as the name suggests. I loved him just as much, but worried so much less. Also, when someone would ask how old Layla was, I would always have a really specific "Three months, 2 weeks, and three days" kind of answer. Ben was plain ol' three months. The second I stopped functioning as a human calendar, the faster time seemed to go.

And now I find myself the day before his second birthday, watching him "fix" the case of the second season of Entourage with his red plastic hammer, occasionally running over to the window to yell "Mama! Look! Balloons!" as colorful hot air balloons float lazily by.  His bright eyes are so full of wonder and curiosity and looking at him I can't imagine him ever encountering an obstacle he can't overcome. He's the perfect man, and all I had to do was give birth to him.

Happy Birthday, Benny.