So Big, So Little

I sit here looking at my sleeping baby, who will be 15 months old next week, and realize how big he is, and how little.
My mother had a sibling 14 months younger than herself, as did my father. One of my cousins is 15 months apart from his brother. I am 18 months older than my next sister. It is a common story for the second child to follow closely behind the first, so it seems. Since Wolf is adopted, my body perceives Bear as my firstborn, and I expected a second child to be in the oven by now...but nature had other plans, as my post-baby fertility is still MIA. 14 or 15 or even 18 months was closer than my ideal--I was hoping to get about 21 months apart, but even that timing has come and gone now. Part of me is a little sad, because I want a large family and feel the biological clock ticking...my mother had three children and a fourth on the way when she was my age...I had expected something similar for myself...but miscarriages got me off to a later-than-expected start, and now my night-nursing baby joins with nature to assure generous child spacing.
But perhaps it is better this way.
As I look at Bear, I cannot imagine if I already had another newborn. I would love to be pregnant soon (I would love to be pregnant now), but I am also glad that I won't have children less than 2 years apart. Bear is so big--he walks and runs, he climbs everything, he has clear preferences and personality, he communicates verbally and is beginning to use words. But Bear is also so little--he loves to cuddle, and almost always needs nurn [nursing] for going to sleep. He sleeps in my bed and nurns at night. He loves daddy, but still needs a lot of mommy time.
He is, after all, still a baby...even though he is also a big boy.