Mental Snapshots

Glamour Girl

Can't wait for the next rainy day

Look at my new wheels!

Yum Yum cupcakes!!

Sometimes I feel like my life is a movie. Each year, someone presses the fast forward button and it passes a little bit more quickly than the previous year. I feel completely powerless to this phenomenon, my only tactic the ever-increasing catalog of photos I take. I will myself to take mental snapshots as well, that focus on what the physical photos don't show. Because, the actual photos can only capture so much. They will never express the feeling of seeing your newborn baby for the first time, holding them against you and the look in their eyes telling you they know you already. They don't capture the smell of that same baby, now one, curled up against you when they wake up with tousled hair and sweet smelling milk breath. They also don't convey the way you feel when that baby turned two-year-old falls and skins her knee, and just the warmth of your arms is the only medicine she needs to soothe her pain. And then, in the blink of an eye, those photos are years old and your baby is three. Three years old. How can this be?? Birthdays are very melancholy for me as a mother. Of course, my inner Martha Stewart comes out and I feel the need to make everything over-the-top perfect for the birthday child. Both my husband and my dad are confused by this. They both grew up in families where birthdays were no big deal. It was a day not so much unlike any other, maybe a small present or a special meal, but none of the hoopla that they are in our family. I know, its just one day on the calendar, but for me its a way of dealing with the fact that my babies are one day older, and one day closer to being all grown up. I am overcome with the ferocity of my love for these little people who are growing up way too fast. So, I cook and I plan and I decorate. This is how I show my love. I try to enjoy each day with them, but lets face it, as a parent there's not endless time to dwell and enjoy when there's laundry to be done, meals to be prepared and messes to be cleaned up. From what my parents and other people their age tell me, that pure enjoyment comes as a grandparent. So in the meantime, I try hard to remember that the day I'm in right now will never happen again, so I need to LIVE it and enjoy it. I take lots of photos and mental snapshots becaue they are what let me relive the moments I swear I will never forget, and then I do.

Today I'm thinking of the day three years ago that I was handed a perfect little 6 lb 12 ounce bundle that is now a sweet giggly three year old. Happy Birthday Finley Violet! Love you.