Friend #32

I said goodbye to my baby today. He's officially no longer a baby. He's officially a first grader now and boy, am I having a rough time.
I've always envisioned having three children like my mother had. And no boys...just beautiful, fair-haired princess-daughters who would let me braid their locks 22 hours of the day (we'd play House for the other two hours.)
Recently, however, I had to come to the realization that at 34, I'm just too darn tired to have baby #3, not to mention take a chance on getting Crazy Wild Boy #3. It pains me, and it took a good two months to "mourn" the third baby that would never come to be, but I'm happy and peaceful now...at least I thought so until my baby graduated from Kindergarten.
Today I met Kolbie, who is 41 years old and pregnant with her 6th baby! Her children are 18, 14, 11, 6 and 2. Her son was graduating with my son and we bonded over tears that flowed with the growth of our baby boys. Kolbie works full-time in her family's business with her husband. She keeps it together, or at least it looks like she does. She and her husband will have kids until she can't have any more. Part of me envies her and part of me wants to yell, "Sucka!" at her for being a slave to her children. She pointed out that she has FOUR "graduations" this year...her Senior, 8th grader, 6th grader, and kindergartner. Yikes. That's a lot of celebrating for one week, if you ask me.
The thing that surprised me about Kolbie is that she looks neither old nor tired. She looks experienced and peaceful. She looks brave. She looks settled and established, especially with this 6th pregnancy.
I'm peaceful, settled and established also. I love my two awesome boys. I am excited to have a niece who I can spoil in a few months and in 6 years, I'll be attending her Kindergarten graduation and crying just as much.