There are lots of reasons I don't so much as make eye contact with other moms during dance class. The most important one is that I don't like people. I especially don't like talking to them.
Alas, being in public with that creature named Mila is basically an invitation to converse for hours. She has a way of making more than enough eye contact for the both of us and then she does that adorable little "blah blah blah" thing and it's all over.
I get to pretend that I'm not a socially awkward introvert.
Most of the time the conversations are fine. I fully acknowledge that I'm just a whiny baby who wants to stare at walls during that hour. Sometimes, though, the conversations are weird. See also: there is a reason I don't like talking to people. I mean, there's really nowhere good to take a conversation that starts with, "Oh. Wow. I could never start over like that."
The stranger was referring to Mila and the giant age gap between her and the dancer. In a few weeks, there will be NINE YEARS between the girls. NINE.
It's a lifetime. I know.
The well-intentioned woman who couldn't start over went on and on about all of the things she's glad to be done with. Diapers, messy meals, fully dependent little people, baby gates, baby-proofing the kitchen, potty training ... she talked for days.
I didn't really reply because Mila was in full-on BREAK ALL OF THE THINGS! mode. She was grabbing and pulling and generally trying to see if she could fit the entire building in her mouth.
(By the way, she can't. She's mad about it, too.)
But the thing is, for every thing that's hard to start again, there are two that are abso-freakin-lutely fantastic.
We got to do that first smile thing again.
We get to celebrate first words again.
There's going to be all the toddler-isms. Alexis may not say "ska-betty" for "spaghetti" any more, but Mila will likely have her own variation. She's going to learn to play "Lello Car," too.
At some point, we will change our last Mila diaper. It will be a victorious day.
She's going to go through that crazy toddler phase when she will sing silly songs all of the time, she will learn to read, and she will talk so much I will think all of the words in the whole wide world are used up.
All of the joy that Alexis has brought to us will get repeated. And, it's getting repeated with enough of a gap for us to be able to pause and enjoy the encore. While Alexis is telling me about her first crush, Mila is discovering that veggie straws are the BEST THING EVER. They're in such very different places that there is no chance for it to blur together.
And it's really pretty fantastic.
