It occurred to me today that I have a child actually living here in this house and some childproofing might be in order.

I thought women who childproofed while pregnant were ridiculous, like it was an extension of their nesting instinct. It was kind of cute, watching Miranda and Steve put locks on the toilet seat on Sex and the City, but I was pretty sure the writers were just strapped for "pregnant things" for Miranda to do. My reasoning was simple: there was really no need to think about it right away. Babies are lumps for the first few months of life. Inside, there's furious growing going on, but from the outside it's pretty boring. You can, theoretically, lay a three-month old in a bouncy seat, not strapped in, on the bathroom floor, and take a shower, occasionally peeking out so they'll smile at you, and little to no harm would come to them. Not that I'd ever do such a thing, just in case people are reading this who would arrest me for such blatant dangerous behavior.

I used to attend this mommy meeting at the hospital where I gave birth. It occurred once a week, but I didn't go that often. Looking back, seven months ago was a completely different time. Getting dressed was a huge undertaking, involving energy and style and what I like to call "giving a shit" that I did not have. The meeting started at 9:30 a.m., and I often made an effort to go, only to wake up at 9:25 and declare it a wash. Or, super-pumped by two hours of straight morning sleep, I'd go to the meeting but arrive at 11:00 a.m. I got to the meeting on time exactly once: the last time, before I moved back down to O.C.

Anyway, at this meeting, there were all kinds of mommies and babies from the ages of birth to seven or eight months. One mommy in particular had lovely skin, an enviable auburn dye job, and a son named Evan. (I don't remember the mommies' names. A year ago, I would have hated this about myself. Now, it's point of fact: moms don't ask one another's names until the third or fourth meeting. Sort of the same way third-date sex solidifies a relationship into something else, finally memorizing another mother's name means you can officially call her a friend.)

Evan was (is, I guess) five months ahead of The Bug. During the meetings, The Bug would look at the lights a lot, sometimes flirt at a nearby mom, gaze without notable thought at the next-door baby, then nurse himself to sleep in my lap. Evan, on the other hand, was sitting by himself when I first saw him, and by the last time I saw him, he was crawling madly after toys and walking, assisted by his mother. This was insane to me. This man-child, Evan, was light-years ahead of The Bug, a whole other kind of human, actually. He was damn near a toddler, no longer really a baby. He shrieked with joy and annoyance. He had a personality. He was enormous and mobile and his mother looked very, very tired. Of course, a child like Evan would require outlet covers and cabinet locks, but The Bug wouldn't need such things for at least five years.

I say five years because time and space, indeed the whole concept of time itself, changes when you have a kid. Before I had The Bug, five months meant a whole lot of time to prepare for Christmas. It meant conceivably enough time to get myself ready for bikini season, with some ice cream cheating wiggle room. Five months could be a whole other year.

Now, five months is like five minutes. You look back at it, at the vision of yourself in Target pajamas that have been vomited on twice and peed upon once, having just awakened at 4:00 p.m., and it feels weird, like it happened to another person, but another person standing right next to you, five minutes ago.

The difference between my concept of time last year and this year is, simply, change. When I was nine months pregnant and sorting all of The Bug's clothing into sizes, I understood that 0-3 month stuff should be in the front and 3-6 should be in the back, but it didn't occur to me that that meant he'd need a whole new wardrobe in the span of three months. Or maybe it did, but that didn't bother me, because three months was a long time, back then. Three months meant another season, thus a whole other set of clothes anyway, if you're Jessica Simpson, and I was watching a lot of VH1 and E! when I was pregnant.

I got used to very little change. Except for surprising spurts in my teens and weight losses or gains, I haven't physically changed since the seventh grade, when I hit 5'10". I've had two clothing sizes: the one I was in and the ideal one I wasn't in, for maybe fifteen years. The Bug has, in eight months, almost tripled his birth weight. This idea was so foreign to me that I was unable to mentally grasp it, even though my belly widened significantly every several days.

The Bug probably outweighs Evan even now. Today, when he refused to nap or be contained, I let him loose in his room and he rolled around, tucked his knees up under his belly in a decidedly near-crawling way, and nearly pulled himself up to standing on his own. I placed toys strategically around the room and opened my book, but he had zero difficulty in locating and getting to each toy, then banging them together. I found I couldn't get through three sentences without him bonking his head on something, sometimes me. Then I remembered Evan, and how he behaved exactly this way, how I told his mother, "I can't imagine The Bug doing that," and the breath that expelled from her mouth at that comment shot out of my mouth, there in The Bug's room, and the world looked very big and dangerous, and armed with sharp corners and heavy, easily-toppled furniture, and I imagined myself in ten years looking back at that moment and knowing what parents meant when they remarked that their newly married children were babies "just yesterday, I swear it."