I was thinking earlier this evening as I rocked my boy before bed time…what will I want to remember? I spend a lot of time here on the blog cataloging the events both big and small of our lives. I write about milestones and vacations. First experiences and the daily grind of life. I write feelings and reflections and observations. But is this what I will want to remember?
Someday when I send him off to his first day of school with his new backpack bouncing on his back? Or when he is a smelly-foot teenager eating me out of house and home? When he’d rather be with his friends? When he finds the woman for him and leaves me? When I am an old woman looking back on my life and his? What will I want to remember?
I guess there is no way to know. But I’ll start here with some things I know I don’t want to forget:
1. The smell of his curly, sweaty head when he wakes up from a nap on a hot day.
2. The way he says “doof”…and makes us wonder what that could possibly mean.
3. The game he made up himself which involves toy cars and the cat tower.
4. The shape of his bite marks on string cheese.
5. The fact that a kiss can make everything better…and they way he holds out the injured body part for me, then goes and shows me what hurt him as if it gives him some sort of closure on the whole ordeal.
6. The say he says “s” as if he’s growling it out.
7. The weight of his body against mine as we rock before bedtime.
8. The way he requests “Bible CD”
9. The way he waters the plants for me…somehow making it into the pot from so far away.
10. That smile where he tilts back his chin in delight.
11. The way he asks for Daddy every morning, and on the weekends when Daddy is actually home, he finds him in bed and it seems as if nothing could make the moment better.
12. The tie-dye shirt is his favorite.
13. When I light a candle in the bathroom to try and cover up the gross diaper/kitty litter smell, he leads me to the kitchen and says “ah one, ah one” (other one) until I light that one too.
14. The way he sweeps with the broom…even shoveling the contents of his sweeping in the dust pan, only to hold the dust pan straight down on the way to the garbage so that everything falls out on the carpet.
15. How he hugs the cats.
16. Counting his fingers and toes…”One, two, wee, two, weeeeeeeee!”
17. The way he climbs into my lap for a story.
18. The way he curls one arm tightly around my neck and plays with my hair when he really wants to hug tight.
19. How proud he is when playing “bat and ball”
20. The way he pretends to cut his toe nails after I do the real thing.
I could go on and on. Maybe I will start a new list for myself…but this is good for now.