  Time these days is running a little behind, and so I've found myself in mid-December realizing that we made it past November. November this year saw Ellie accomplish the milestone of 40 weeks old. It meant she has now spent more time outside of me than in, and in its strange way, that's a very sentimental and somewhat sad event for me.
When I was pregnant each time, I wished away each week that brought me closer to term, but as soon as the baby was born I felt different. I wished I could push them back inside because they seemed so much safer there, and more intimately connected to me. Plus, we are especially aware with Ella that birth meant the giant explosion of growth and development, the all too rapid passage of the sweet infant stage, then the fun baby stage, and finally, the impressive toddling stage. With Aidan, we cheered the passage of each stage because we were so happy to see him progress, but now that we know how quickly those stages pass, we're a little less eager to see Ella progress. Not that we don't cheer her on, we do, and her cheering section includes Aidan. It just tears at my heart a little when she makes each leap.
One anthropologist, Ashley Montagu, theorizes that human babies actually have an 18 month gestation time, and they, like kangaroos or possums, spend part of their gestation outside the womb. That explains why the human infant's brain development is so very dependent on being touched and carried womblike. After watching my children, I think this theory makes perfect sense. Last month Ellie really came out of herself.
She's always been a watcher, but now she's very interactive with people and objects. Also, I realized after the fact that I instinctively began inching in childcare with each child when they were nine months old. The other thing about November passing was marking the anniversary of the death of our daughter Grace, who died before birth when I miscarried. A friend of ours shared that she had a difficult time each October because that's when her baby she miscarried last year would have been born. For us, the actual date that we lost our daughter, Grace, is the harder one. That November was such a nightmare. Work was an all-time difficult high for me, I got very sick with a nasty flu, and then I miscarried Grace.
A week later our house was broken into and a few weeks after that, our car. 
