A Big Boy & A Baby Boy

His mother treasured all these things in her heart. And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.

—Luke 2:51–52

With your first baby, or at least with our first baby, you’re so excited for them to get big! Big! Big! You want them to do things, to become their big, grown-up selves, to show you that they’re geniuses, precocious in every way. But I want to keep Mac tiny. I want him to be my baby forever. I totally might be one of those moms who carries a four-year-old in a BabyBjörn, legs dangling past my knees. I’ll keep him in footie sleepers until he’s twelve, cut his meat until he has a driver’s license. Stay a baby, darling.

I feel like our boys are the perfect ages right now—a big boy and a baby boy. I don’t need Mac to get big; I already have a lovely, stinky, adventurous, chatty big boy. That position’s been filled, and what I need is for Mac to stay my baby—my tiny, snuggly, smiling baby boy.

But this is perhaps the heart of parenting: despite my aching, desperate baby-love, it’s my job to help him into being a big boy. It’s my job, my honor, to walk him, quite literally, from baby to toddler to boy to man.