Capturing these moments

These pictures were taken 3-31-08. The day after this blog was written.

I am sitting in a house that is empty…besides myself. I would say it feels weird. But it really doesn’t. It feels normal. Yes, my days are filled (24-7 mostly) with my children, and especially with Brielle, now four months old. But for the past 4 ½ years (since Tyler went to kindergarten) I’ve had moments of solitude by myself. Four years is much longer than four months. I am enjoying this moment. It’s going to fly by. I enjoy my moments with my children too. They too, fly by.
I realized today the irony of what I try to do with my capturing moments and memories. I take a ton of pictures, I scrapbook, and I journal about everything. And while those are wonderful things, nothing will every quite bottle time for us. The moments I want to capture and remember cannot be recorded with my camcorder, nor written down. They are too hard to describe. They are felt. They are the moment. Being older with a new baby has a different perspective. No one has to tell me to enjoy it now, or how time flies. I hold her and rock her to sleep. I can’t recapture how she feels, so perfect in my arms. I can’t capture her wonderful smell, or how she looks at me. A picture would never do the moment justice. I’ll never be able to recreate her nursing as she is now. And I will probably never nurse another baby again. The games she sometimes plays, when she is in the mood. Our sweetest interactions sometimes come when she is fresh from nursing, and draws back just to look at and talk to me. Sometimes it will be so random or unique that I’ll throw back my head and laugh. Then I look at her, seriously. Time turns over. This is our moment. How it happens, that is what I want to capture. Burn it to my memory. Savor every moment. Close my eyes and breathe it in. No, don’t close my eyes or I will miss it. How her soft sweet foot feels to press it to my cheeks and my lips over and over again. To watch her discover new things, about herself, about her surroundings. I discover some new things too. About me, about my life. She makes me pay attention to her. She makes me pay attention to our time together. She allows me to interact more with the boys in our family, and even strangers greet us when we are out. (Mostly when she is in the pouch sling -which she still loves.) We know she is beautiful, but people still tell us that all of the time. Everywhere we go, people say, “oh, she is so beautiful.” Not cute, not precious, not sweet, not even adorable-just beautiful-- maybe that is normal for all baby girls.