Thanks for the Memories

I spent this evening drinking wine out of a box at my good friend, Big Liver Girl's house, and her delightful and newly-moved-to-town sister-in-law and brother-in-law were there as well. The Newly Moved to Towns have two delightful and delicious little children, about a year old and around two, who toddled and pattered and ambled about the place with complete good humor and bonhomie. I had totally forgotten what life is like with small children....it's not that long ago that my own were that age, but, truly, it is astonishing how quickly you forget. At the time it seems like your life was always ruled by what resembles drunken midgets looking for a bar brawl, and that it will never be any different, but it passes in a heartbeat.

I had forgotten:

• how busy small children are. They are like sharks, they never stop moving. Those little hands and feet and minds are always on the go. I suppose it's the fact that it's all new, it's all novel, and it must be investigated at once.
• how noisy they can be. Believe me, these two were far from loud, but I had forgotten the constant narration that young kids keep up. My own two were champion talkers from the time they figured out how to do it, and there were times when I offered to pay them a quarter if they would just. stop. talking for five minutes. (Which produced a whole other rant of "how much is a quarter?can we drive to DisneyWorld for that?how long is five minutes?is it this long?is it this long?is it this long?")
• how determined small children are to kill themselves. Really, they are quite purposeful in their goal to do themselves harm. "Hey! Is that a set of stairs I see? What happens if I stand at the top and lean over??? And wow! A rusty exacto knife! I bet I can have a lot of fun with that!!" There's no end to the perils they will pursue.
• how delightfully round and squishy their little bodies are. Babies and toddlers have exquisite skin and they smell delicious and their little knees and shoulders and bums are insanely darling.
• how little they are. I know it's ridiculously obvious, but they really are such tiny, wee things. You forget how small a space they take up.
• how tactile they are. Apart from the fact that they will happily play with nothing but their own body fluids for hours, I had forgotten how much they touch and like to be touched, and they climb all over you and you don't even notice most of the time. That perpetual physical connection is really such a very short time for both of you.

I thought I'd suffer from Post Traumatic Toddler Dissorder for the rest of my days when I was in the thick of it myself. If you had told me I'd have forgotten what it was like this easily, I'd have never believed it. But I did.