Changing of the Guard

Let's move away from pictures of macerated fingers and dwell on this Lump of Deliciousness, shall we?:

She's such a doll, my friends, and that tiny dimple in her right cheek is too powerful for me to resist kissing. So I usually don't.

She had a big weekend, too, albeit much safer and less traumatic than her sister's. She moved out of the little crib in our room and into the newly vacated big crib in "the nursery."

Sally, after having spent all the nights of her life in the big crib, has finally moved in with Francie. And Mopsy, who has begun using her legs to scoot around her bed, was finding the mini-crib too confining. It was beyond time for a good game of musical beds.

Still, even though everyone is so much more comfortable and happy, I feel the growing pains.

The big crib is the family crib. It is the crib we bought with gift money for the first baby we brought home. It is the crib we dragged along with us in the military.

Fiver used to lay in this crib, so calmly and silently, until someone came to find him smiling up sweetly every morning.

I watch Mopsy stare in delighted amusement at the dangling mobile, and I can remember Bun doing the same thing. Wasn't that just yesterday?

Sally was just a little thing in that crib, but that was four years ago. Years, not days.

When I laid Francie in that crib nearly eleven years ago, I could never have imagined the sweet babies that would follow her. When I put away her outgrown clothes, I wondered if I'd ever have another daughter who would use them.

And now here she is, Mopsy, another daughter after another daughter after two sons, sleeping soundly on the dreams that her siblings have dreamed.