After a Night of Home Video Clips

I'm not doing enough.

This sentiment characterized my thoughts as I watched videos that we've taken of our daughters.  The moments captured on film had seemed so normal as I lived them, but now -- just a few years or months removed -- they already usher me into such nostalgia that I keep watching clip after clip at the computer hours after I reasonably should have gone to bed.

Did Reese really sound like that when she was three?

How could I have forgotten that Brooke used to army crawl across the floor, reaching one arm out and dragging her body behind?

Is it possible that Kerrington didn't always have that mop of wispy curls that I love running my fingers through now? 

Have I preserved enough of these memories?

It's impossible to preserve it all.  You can't fill your present only by recalling your past.  I know this.  Yet, I want to remember exactly how it feels when my daughters slip their hands into mine as we walk together in a chain through a parking lot.  I want to remember the sweetly sticky smell of their hair when I bend over to kiss them on their heads.  I want to remember the thumping sound of their padded feet running down the hallway.

Unwillingly, I resign to the fact that I will not remember it all.

It might be one of the impetuses that propels me to write this blog.

But that afternoon when the baby pooped in the bathtub, was carried into the other bathtub, and then pooped there, too?  That is an afternoon that I could forget.  And the evening when I left my cart full of groceries in aisle five so I could carry a screaming, flailing toddler out of the store?  I could forget that one, too.

Then again, these moments might be exactly why I write this blog.

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7 comments

  1. Preserving memories is most definitely the main reason I write my blog.  I want to remember the good ones and keep record of the bad ones, too,  so I can share them with my girls as well ( and maybe hold it over their heads when I am old and gray!) ;-)

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  2. Seriously? In two bathtubs? Dudette never once did that. God much have known that my stomach wouldn't have been strong enough to handle it.

    I feel the same way though. I think that's what is means where it says that "Mary treasured all these things, pondering them in her heart."

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  3. We forgave this unfortunate episode because she's so cute.  We're just hoping that it never, ever happens again.

    Perfect verse.... yes, I understand that "treasuring" process, as I know you do, too.

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  4. I tagged you in my recent challenge post. http://colemanscrazymama.blogspot.com/2012/02/getting-to-know-me.html

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  5. Danielle CooperFebruary 20, 2012

    I know it's the main reason I blog, so I remember something a couple years from now ;-). Also my daughter Brinley just pooped in the bath tub tonight...again. So I'm in the same boat. So much fun...but I'm sure I'll miss them.

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  6. Yup, there are wonderful memories and then those of my son pooping in the corner of the electronics store. We thought he was fully potty trained so he had no diapers on. We haven't gone back to that store again :)

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  7. Had to laugh at your grocery aisle experience.  Had one today as my toddler screams in the cashier line, MAMA SPANKED ME!  And I just smile at the lady, who was thinking, God only knows.  But then, she just smiled back and said, "I have 6 children who are all grown now." She understood.  Motherhood sure isn't a walk in the park, huh?  But those home videos and the memories that they're made of make it all worth it! Thanks for the post!

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