Last year, I had a baby.

This year, this month, suddenly it seems as if I don't.

Babies lie swaddled on their backs, then one day, they learn to roll over onto their tummies, then to survey the world on hands and knees.

Babies crawl.

Everyone else walks.

Overnight, or more realistically, over the course of nearly 500 nights, Orli has joined the ranks of the latter.

Her thighs have fewer folds than they did a year ago. Her blonde hair has more wispy curls. Her blue eyes, if this is possible, have gotten bluer.

At 16 months, she’s got a fairly useful vocabulary. She can screech “All done!” when she wants to escape her high chair and recently debuted her version of “I’ll get it” when the telephone rings. She calls her brother “Vivi” and her sister “Ra-Ra.”

No longer is she satisfied with baby rattles and teething toys. She plays real games with real toys, stealing her sister’s favorite baby doll and strapping the unsuspecting Charlene into her highchair, then into a bouncy seat, then into a swing before big sis yanks her away.

Last week, in a split second of parental inattention, she slipped down the big kid slide at the park all by herself, showing off her eight widely spaced front teeth in a brilliant smile when I scooped her up at the bottom.

Despite what I see as their self-evident charm, some people are not “baby people.” They don’t like the hands-on quality of babyhood, the spit up on the couch, the cascade of dirty diapers, the smeared baby peas on the wall, on tiny faces, in babyfine hair.

They don’t like the helplessness of an infant, how they can’t tell you what they want, how they need to be carried everywhere. They can’t wait until that first step.

Do they realize that first step is both literal and symbolic? First, babies learn to walk. Then, eventually, they walk away.

I was impatient with my firstborn, anxious for him to master each milestone, to see what lay ahead. When he was late to crawl and late to walk, I fretted over what this meant for his future.

With Orli, it concerned me in a totally different way. With Orli, I fretted over what this meant for my future.

I’m still figuring it out. I can’t honestly say that my children define me, but it is accurate to say I am defined, in part, by my children. They have slowed me down and rounded my sharp edges.

I like who I am now better than I like who I was before them.

Perhaps my desire to keep Orli small – to freeze her, to press “pause” -- is a way to immortalize this kinder, gentler me who sits criss-cross-applesauce on the floor far more often than I sit in a chair, reading board books, playing jacks, internalizing the lessons about joy and simplicity I learn each day from my children.

Meawhile, despite my best efforts, Orli is gaining speed.

Bonnie appears Mondays on TriangleMom2Mom.