And That's That.

I expected to be more sentimental.  More sad.  More torn between the sweetness of independence and the bitterness of the same.

I expected to be more something.

But instead, I'm just at peace.

It was time I suppose.  Eighteen months past the day of her birth, we had well surpassed the final days of her sisters.

And she was ready.  Our moments were brief, occurring only at bedtime and lasting a mere minute or two.

So grown up she is, able to soothe herself to sleep in the comfort of her own bed.  She desires that solitude.  It feels weird to not be needed in that way any longer.

An act I identified with for five years collectively.  Something that defined me, that placed me within a group - for you either do or you don't.  And I did.

For five years.

And now I no longer.  And I expected those final moments to bring more emotion.  For you don't do anything for five years without developing some sort of opinion about it.  Love it or hate it, the end is an end and there's no going back.

But it was just time.

I look at her now and realize my days of being mama to a baby are quickly transforming into days of being mama to a toddler.  We are racing toward that transition at a break neck speed.  And for the first time ever, there's no baby waiting in the wings to take that place.

I suppose I feel more sadness and sentimentality over that fact than anything else.

And perhaps that's the way it should be.  It's not the end of the act that's bittersweet, it's what that end represents for our family and for me.

It's the closing of a chapter.  And like any good book, I'm eager to begin the next.  Yet I linger with a sense of wistfulness over the pages I've just finished.  Because although I will remember them with crisp clarity, it will never be the same as reading them for the first time.