Baby girl

You're eight months old. You're huge - a big bundle of girl, all rolls of fat and grins and grabbing hands. You've learnt to move, commando crawling around the house at top speed, yelling with delight at the new-found freedom. I turn my head and you're gone, zooming out of the room, your position betrayed by your own exuberance and your escaping shout. You greet us now, the ones you know - with a specific call, an almost-sigh and a smile as we come into view, you reach up your arms and gaze upwards waiting for one of us to hold you. If we're late by a milisecond you shout at us - 'how dare you move past me? How DARE you ignore me?' You're changing by the second and also not at all - you've always been like this, you're just growing in confidence.

We danced, yesterday, around the kitchen before tea - you holding my neck and giggling, and me pressed to your cheek, swinging you around to the music on the radio. I used to dance like this with your big brother, and I danced too while you were still inside, holding the bump of you and dancing to the same songs. Maybe you remember them. I hold you and breathe in the still-baby smell of you and wonder how to keep this moment. How to keep it safe and remembered because it passes too fast. You grow almost in front of my eyes. I imagine your future - spiralling away in front of us, of you, and it looks brilliant. I watch you from two angles - I see you now, bright and bouncing and grinning in front of me, and at the same time I'm hurtled into the future, looking back on this, remembering it as it happens - my children growing up while I stand and watch - a spectator.