another reason parenting is hard...

The emotional attachment to these little creatures who are amazing, incredible, so loving and adoring, all the while knowing that they're growing & changing (so fast!) on the path toward being tweens, adolescents, teenagers, adults. Getting used to (and reveling in!) arriving home after work to little arms raised up, wanting nothing more than my attention, loves, hugs, kisses, dancing in my arms - but knowing that I won't have this at some point in the future.  I guess it just feels so different than any other relationship. For example, it would have been so strange to be falling in love with Jerry and knowing all the while that eventually we would no longer have the same sort of loving interactions.  Of course I hope that the boys will always want affection from their mom in a certain form, but I know these days of innocent, unedited expressions of love are finite. And there's grief in that knowledge.  I'll love the men they'll be some day, but I'm going to miss the toddlers they are today.

(The bottles are "pretty much done" at this point. The last 2 nights they've had a sippy cup with milk before bed instead of a bottle and they've gone to sleep just fine.  Yesterday they had no bottles at all.  This morning, I had time to put change the boys's diapers and get them into their chairs for breakfast before I left for work and G was having a meltdown about not having a bottle - I've yet to hear from Jerry as to whether or not he had to give in & give a bottle).