The beginning of the end

My morning routine goes something like this:

-Wake up to the sound of our daughter over the baby monitor.

-Roll over and groan… can it really be 5:30 already?

-Pick up baby, smile, give many kisses.

-Put baby in high chair, make a pot of coffee, make baby bottle.

-Sit down on couch, put on morning news, administer bottle.

This Saturday morning was a little different, though, because after I made the bottle I uncapped it, put it in front of her, and watched. 

She knows how to drink from a sippy cup.  But a bottle is a little different.  She needs to hold it at a specific angle so that the nipple fills with milk and she gets liquid, not a bunch of air.

So on this particular morning she picks up the bottle, puts the nipple in her mouth, then throws her head back and begins to drink.  And I am delighted.  “Yay!  What a big girl!”

And then it hits me.

This is the beginning of the end. 

This is the beginning of a process that ends with my baby girl not needing me anymore.

I've got 2 kids, so I've given hundreds of bottles in my lifetime.  Maybe a thousand, even.  And every time I had to drag myself out of bed at  3 AM it was a colossal pain in the ass.  But by the time I’d settled into the chair, and got that little baby nestled in my arms just right, that was always gone.  There is a closeness, a bond between you and that half sleeping baby.  She needs you.  She needs you to care for her and look out for her and wake up in the darkness and feed her. She needs her Daddy.

Now she can drink it on her own.  She doesn't need me for that anymore.  And while the advantages to this are huge, I am happy and sad at the same time.  It is a milestone marking a dependence that has begun to slip away.

We want our kids to grow up and become strong, independent individuals.  We want them to sleep through the night and get potty trained and dress themselves.

But on some level, we want them to stay little forever.  To depend on us, to need us in this most fundamental way.  To know that when they are frightened, we will be there to hold them, when they are sad we will make them laugh, and when they are hungry in the nighttime, the bottle, and the Daddy, will always be there.