This site is a personal blog, but one that’s filled with my thoughts on the things I enjoy exploring. It also has information about my experience and skill in case someone wants to hire me. 🙂
With this daily writing challenge I’m doing this month, I’ve been encouraged to write a variety of things. So this post today has nothing to do with podcasting or writing. It’s not one that urges churches and other organizations to make your message mobile!
Because of a birthday
This is about family and what I remember about my oldest daughter when she was the only baby we had. She has a birthday coming up. As she’s gotten older, it has been difficult to completely remember every detail from when she was a baby and a toddler.
We have pictures of course. Maybe thousands of pictures thanks to digital cameras and smartphones. And because we’ve posted many on Facebook, the Facebook algorithms or AI reminds us of those old photos where she was eating spaghetti in the messiest possible way.
One of the challenges we’ve faced is the fact that no one prepared us to parent little ones. I think both our families had forgotten what it was like to raise a baby or a toddler. I’m starting to believe that’s what really happened. My only proof: I see that my own memories are fading.
I think that’s probably good. There were some sleepless nights. There were tantrums. There were diapers. And diapers. And diapers.
Forgetting much of that is probably the way most parents stay sane.
What’s left are (mostly) good memories. Hearing her first few laughs. Seeing her learn to crawl, climb (scary!), walk, and run. Hearing her words as she learned to speak. Those are precious! And I’m thankful for the videos and photographs that support my memories.
One thing I noticed, though, is that there seemed to be no clear, definitive “first day” she did this or that.
What exactly was her first word? It was mixed with so many phonemes as she practiced saying what we were saying. There were times we were pretty sure we heard a word, but she would never say it again until years later.
Her first steps? The first time she walked? It was unclear. It looked like she took a step and then promptly fell to the floor. Did that count?
No one ever told us about that kind of stuff either.
One series of vivid memories is holding her when she refused to go to sleep on her own in her own crib.
We didn’t buy into the whole “cry it out” method. So we held her. A lot.
It was exhausting, of course. But it was so amazing, too. I used to sing, which turned into hums. I sang/hummed lots of songs, but my go to favorite was auld lang syne. That was mostly hummed because I didn’t know all the lyrics.
But it seemed to work. I felt like the low tones were soothing to her. Who knows for sure, right? But she didn’t fuss much when I sang that to her. I could sing it over and over, quietly and calmly, till she fell asleep in my arms.
We’ve had two other kids since then, and they have heard my own rendition of that song many times.
It just feels nice remembering that. Maybe I’ll sing it on her birthday to celebrate.
