Twenty-eight Months

Dear Patrick,

A few months ago, Daddy and I realized that due to a glitch in our back-up system, we had lost many of the pictures from your first year, including nearly all of your newborn pictures. Needless to say, we were devastated. Thank goodness for devoted grandparents, though; between the two sets, we have recovered just about all of those pictures, with many new pictures we had never seen from your early days as well.

In the process of recovering all these pictures and transferring them to the computer, I have had the opportunity to go back and reminisce about your early days. I've run the gamut of emotions, from elation to tears of joy to tears of grief as I remember what we went through in your first few weeks of life. Mostly I've just found it good to have these concrete memories of what you were like as a baby.
I've realized more and more as we compare Nathan to you at his age that I don't remember much about what you were really like back then. Daddy keeps asking me if I remember when you used to do such and such, and I have to take his word for it because I can't remember. I'm so focused on you as you are now that I've forgotten so many details from you as a baby and crawler and early walker. I'm glad for the blog now so that I can go back and look again to recapture some of those memories that are fading with time.

I wonder if that's what being a mommy is really about, once you get past the caring for the kids part. I feel like I spend so much of every day trying to remember every little thing about who you are right now, and so much more time anticipating what you will be like tomorrow and the day after that, and when you start school, and when you graduate. In the middle of all of that, I realize I'm losing who you used to be, who you were yesterday, and before you walked, and before you sat up, and before you left the hospital. I suspect it's common for mommies to get so caught up in who you are today and anticipating who you will be tomorrow that the you of yesterday slowly disappears into flimsy memories we try desperately to recapture.

So thank goodness for obsessive photo-taking, and baby books, and blogs. As much as it can hurt sometimes to recognize I didn't cherish each one of your past days the way I'd hoped I would, I relish the nostalgia. At least I do have all these concrete places to recapture those past days, if only for a few seconds at a time.

But I vow to you not to let my reminiscing take away from my present moments with you. For example, right now you are cuddled up next to me, helping me blog your monthly letter for the first time. While I love the help, I think I'm going to let this be enough of a concrete memory of the moment for now while I create another one, by using my fingers to start a tickle fight instead of typing. I hope you don't mind too much.

I love you, my twenty-eight-month-old baby boy.

Mommy