Like all families out there, ours is very busy. Between all the obligations and commitments, I often worry that I’m missing important times with my family and when I see the very empty baby book that belongs to my third child, I cringe.
The poor child has no documentation of his babyhood. I know he got his first tooth around 6 months, that he crawled around 9 months (I think…) and that he walked after he was a year old. (Dropping head in shame.)
Sometimes I fight the urge to grab the thing and fill it with bogus dates just to assuage the guilt I feel about not remembering exactly when these milestones occurred.
And let’s not even talk about how much that knot tightens in my belly when I pick up the New York City phonebook of Baby Books that belongs to my first born. I visualize the future where I will be explaining to my second and third born,
“It’s not that I love you less, I just had WAY MORE TIME when I just had one baby and wasn’t running a business and volunteering for godknowswhat. I could document the exact second your brother rolled over from front to back because there was no one about to draw on their face with sharpie every time I sat down, nor were there pressing jobs that needed to be shot, edited or sent to the printer. It was just a baby with two adults hovering and staring.”
Anyway, that is why it is such a delight to be on my computer digging through the archives looking for some file and stumble upon a small session I did one afternoon 16 months ago and forgot about. He’s about 2 months here and oh so little compared to the big belly-laughing, climbing, running, starting to talk, 18-month-old that he is today.
It gives me hope that if I can ever find the time to print out all his baby photos, I will discover that he hasn’t fallen into the cracks of the Third Child Syndrome and his baby book will look like a respectable city sized phonebook.
so sweet and candid. I’ve read that a baby/kid staring into space is about the only time their right and left brains are working simultaneously… which equals Genius Time. He’s probably working out the difficult problems of the world in his perfect baby way — with gusto, creativity, and sloppy flair. the truth is, we probably don’t give our 1st borns such precious space-out time. in other words, no worries mama. you are doing a great job.
He is so friggin’ beautiful and as always your photos are amazing. : )