Today I saw a picture of my Dad without his beard. I knew that he shaved it off recently but I have not yet seen him in person. He has had this beard since I was a young teenager so I realized that I have known him longer with a beard than without!!
Then I got to thinking about age. I remember as a young child asking my mom how old she was and when she really had to think about it I thought she was joking. At the time she probably was in her late 30's. Today I commented to someone that my birthday was coming fairly soon and I seriously had to think about how old I was!!! It must be something about being in your late 30's that makes you forget your exact age.
Today I also held a 5 month old baby. As I held him and snuggled him I realized that my little niece is over 2 months old already. I still have not seen her and probably will not until she is at least 10 months old. Sam was walking at 10 months!! This really made me sad that I would miss seeing her as a little baby.
Then I remembered when Sam was only a couple months old I was visiting a friend who had a baby a year or so earlier. As she held Sam she commented that she could not remember her child being so small. At the time I thought that was so silly and how could she possibly not remember! Well as I held that 5 month old baby today I had a hard time remembering what my kids were like that young!!
I don't know why all of these things came into my mind today, but as I reflect on them I am so grateful for all of those moments - even the ones I don't remember right now.
As I think back to all the times people say how quickly babies grow it really is true, I just wish they would also tell us how to preserve memories. I have tried to do it by taking lots of pictures and even some video and that has helped. I have my photos randomly pop up as a screen saver. Sometimes we just sit and watch the random photos. There is always something that comes up that makes us smile or laugh at a funny situation.
So I guess this post can be labelled in the Kid Tips category. My tip is to take lots of photos. I use Snapfish to print the best of the snapshots. Even though I have no idea when I will find the time to actually organize them into photo albums I do know that someday I will have the time. The most important thing is that I have taken the time to take the photos and preserve at least some of the memories.
One of the best things that I do is to make sure I take a photo of each of my kids every month. I used Snapfish to make up little booklets of these photos for each child's first year. Seeing one photo per month really shows how quickly they change! Now I make sure I still have one usable photo per child as well as one of all three of them together. This is not always an easy task! I use them to make photobooks in snapfish, one page per month. If I keep up with it and try to set up a page every month it really does not take that long to do.
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