We spent some time down in San Antonio this weekend, enjoying a long-overdue Father’s Day lunch with [Dad McMains->] and some time visiting [Mom McMains->] and her five new dachshund puppies. One of our projects for the summer has been getting Maggie swimming, and while at Mom’s, she finally got the hang of it enough to keep her head above water reliably. I expected her to get discouraged after getting a snootful of water a couple of times, but she just made a horrid retching sound, then whipped around and swam right back where she had come from.

Then on Sunday, I noticed Maggie going around to each of the doors that opened into the front room where I was sitting and quietly closing them. Now, the only time that Maggie is quiet is when she’s up to something, so I suspected she was trying to get away with some behavior she knew was illicit. Sure enough, when I checked on her a few minutes later, she had snuck a bag of dried cranberries into her room and was chowing down. (She hid her face in her pillow when she heard me coming, presumably on the theory that if she couldn’t see me, I couldn’t see her.)

Since Maggie’s likely to be the last of our kiddos, it’s a bittersweet time: knowing on one hand that we’re not going to have to deal with diapers anymore, or going through toilet training, but also that we won’t be hearing a first word or watching a fist step again. Wayne Watson expresses it well in his song Watercolor Ponies:

But Baby, what will we do
When it comes back to me and you?
They look a little less like little [ones] every day.
Oh the pleasure of watching the children growing
Is mixed with the bitter cup of knowing
The watercolor ponies will one day ride away.