memory keeper

Stylemint tee (similar); F21 shorts; Target sandals and hat; Laonato necklace; Curiouscreatures necklace.

My kids love to hear stories about when they were born. To them, hearing all the little details of what they looked like, who held them and all the little parts that only a mom can remember makes them happy. My daughter likes to hear about how she was born three weeks early and so quickly I was almost shocked to be holding her in my arms. Tiny, just five pounds, thirteen ounces and a seventeen inches long. Her tiny body all curled up was astonishingly small. So small my mother had to run too Target and buy preemie clothes because everything I bought was huge on her. She loves hearing that I held her first and how she had a head full of black hair and a crooked little nose (which straightened out the next day) and a birthmark on her left leg that we call her special spot. She loves hearing how her daddy held her for hours that night, staring at this little person who, up until then, had seemed rather obscure. Knowing you have a baby coming and actually holding that baby are two different things. He kept asking, "Are they really going to let us take her home?" My daughter loves hearing how, on her first night home, her mommy was so exhausted from staying up nearly forty-eight hours that she went to bed and slept six hours straight and she and daddy watched "Road House" together while sprawled in the recliner downstairs.

My son loves to hear how when he was born we had a name we picked out for him, Max. But when he was born he didn't look like a Max. Up until then I used to laugh at people who waited to name babies until they looked at them. Didn't all newborns look the same? My baby certainly did not look like what he had named him. So for a day he had no name. I wrote down name options on the back of the hospital menu that night. Names which I brainstormed off the top of my head that I remember liking. It had taken months to come up with a name that my husband and I both liked and now we had a little boy with no name. He liked Rocco, I liked Maguire (to be called Mac) and as a wild card I threw Brady on the list. I spent that night and all next morning looking at this little boy. Who are you? What do you look like? We narrowed it down to Maguire and Brady and finally (finally!), about two hours before we were discharged from the hospital we decided that he was a Brady. Eight months, two weeks and one day after this little boy was created he became his name.

I love that my children enjoy hearing these stories. As their mama it feels like I am the keeper of all the dear little moments that make up their history.