Babies Don't Keep

Mother, O' Mother, come shake out your cloth,
Empty the dustpan, poison the moth.
Hang out the washing, make up the bed,
Sew on a button and butter the bread.

Where is the mother whose house is so shocking?
She's up in the nursery, blissfully rocking.

Oh, I've grown as shiftless as Little Boy Blue,
Lullaby, rockaby, lullaby loo.
Dishes are waiting and bills are past due,
Pat-a-cake, darling, and peek - peekaboo.

The shopping's not done and there's nothing for stew,
And out in the yard there's a hullabaloo.
But I'm playing Kanga and this is my Roo.
Look! Aren't his eyes the most wonderful hue?
Lullaby, rockaby, lullaby loo.
The cleaning and scrubbing can wait till tomorrow,
But children grow up, as I've learned to my sorrow.
So quiet down cobwebs; Dust go to sleep!
I'm rocking my baby and babies don't keep.

~ Ruth Hulbert Hamilton

I find myself remembering this poem more and more often these days.

We're discussing Acorn going to kindergarten this fall (though his IEP will be later this month, and it's not a done deal until then).  He's more than half my height (he's 3 feet 6 inches tall - pretty good for a kiddo who started out only a foot long). He's swimming, and very serious about it - and he looks so much older these days, with the thin but strong body of a little boy who plays hard, instead of the somewhat rounder look of a toddler:

And Leaf took her first step (just the one though) this week - we're hoping her new SMOs will help with that, but they're dwarfed by the velcro that holds them in place:

Even so, she's getting big too. In a year we'll be talking about transitioning from early intervention into special ed preschool. With any luck, we'll be trach free or nearly so by then, and probably talking about swimming lessons or dance class or something like that for her too.

Definitely not babies anymore...which always catches me by surprise.