Every day, I have 2 dozen reminders of how little my kids used to be. How tiny and perfect, how sweet and innocent. How freaking ridiculously small and cute. Frankly, I'm tired of it. It disgusts me.
Take this picture, for example:
This is 2 year old and apparently topless Ava. LOOK HOW CUTE SHE IS! Look at her tiny face and brown eyes. DO IT! I cannot look at this picture longer than 10 seconds without getting sad. This baby girl couldn't read. She didn't write and make me curl her super thick hair and give me maximum sassiness when she disagreed with me. She was nice, and I miss her.
Here's another example, much worse:
Alana was only 3 months old in this picture, and the worst part about it isn't that I can't remember her as a baby, its that I paid Sears a large sum of money to take it. I had no idea how fast she would grow up, someone please tell 24 year old Jennifer to stop wishing her first baby was a toddler already, because you can't get that time back. This little baby will be 8 and talking about boys and wearing braces before you know it 24 year old Jennifer, I know that's crazy because she doesn't even have teeth yet, but don't blink. Don't even think about it!
Another thing that no one bothers to mention in the whole pre-kids peptalk? With each kid, time goes faster. You think that time went fast when your first was a baby? When you probably had nothing more to do each day than sit around and stare at their face and watch old episodes of ER? WRONG. When you get to your second kid, and you want to sit around and stare at their tiny baby face while they sleep, you can't. Instead, you will have to put them down so that you can feed and clothe and keep your other kid alive. Then, when you think time cannot possibly go faster, your third kid comes along. Its highly possible by this point that at least one of your previous children will be in school, you know, because of the time warp thing. So each day, while your baby should be sleeping and being stared at by you, instead they are being placed in a carseat and brought along to pick up somebody from school. Instead of sleeping in and being held early in the morning, they are laying on the floor screaming while their mommy puts someone's hair in a ponytail and packs a lunch (this scenario is only until their daddy gets out of bed and picks that sad baby up). And then, because of the school errands and the field trips and the tons of early mornings and afternoon homework, you turn around and your third baby isn't so little anymore. He's 3, and he doesn't want to sleep on your chest while you stare at his face. He's a man now, he has no time for that. So then Timehop, because its a huge jerk, is like Look at your little baby, he'll never be this small again blah blah blah go cry in the bathroom now.
That third baby and his insistence on growing up stings a little. And Timehop just has to rub it in.
By the grace of my fourth baby not being one yet, he is not included in my daily nostalgia and pictures of sadness, save the occasional ultrasound or picture of my belly from last summer. This only means one thing, Timehop is waiting about 3 months to start torturing me. Mid-November it will start in with the hospital pictures, pictures of Liam and his siblings, the 1,000 pictures of him sleeping, all of the pictures and heartache combined in one convenient (and free minus the cost of your tears!) app. That space/time paradox of your first 3 kids is nothing, and I mean NOTHING, compared to your fourth. With number 4 you likely have 2 kids in school, a very active 2 year old to keep alive/stop from smothering the baby, and tons of crap that doesn't involve staring at your baby to do. Even if you're lucky and your husband does all of the grocery shopping and buys you tons of cookies and soup from Panera, you will still have to do the dumb stuff, because he will go back to work. That stuff shouldn't even be necessary, staring at your baby should be number one on the list of priorities, eating is a close second and showering doesn't even rank on there. You can shower when they're grown up, or when you start to smell, whichever one comes first.
I am already bracing myself for the influx of tiny Liam pictures, but I don't think it will help. I don't think when I wake up 2 1/2 months from now and my guy is 1 that any mental preparation I have done will have me ready. Every picture will make me sad, every faded memory of holding him for the first time and squeezing in the maximum amount of snuggles with him will seem insufficient, because I will forget. Just like we forget the bad things, like contractions and stitches, the memories of the good stuff fade too. That fleeting time when their tiny butt fits into your hand and they're so sleepy that they lay on your chest and snore without any effort, that memory will become distant. All of the times that they pee all over the place and you have to change their clothes and yours at midnight, it will seem like another lifetime ago. And then Timehop will come in, acting like it owns the place, and let you know that guess what? Your kids are growing up! And you can't remember what they used to be before they were wild preschoolers and first graders and third graders, not without all of these old pictures that will make you sad! So we'll help you remember, the only catch is that you will be sad afterwards!
This tiny guy is crawling now, and by the time he's a toddler I'm going to need Timehop and the depression that accompanies it, to remind me of a time when he did not try to eat anything left on the floor or pull my hair. So I guess I won't delete it just yet, maybe next year.
I am already bracing myself for the influx of tiny Liam pictures, but I don't think it will help. I don't think when I wake up 2 1/2 months from now and my guy is 1 that any mental preparation I have done will have me ready. Every picture will make me sad, every faded memory of holding him for the first time and squeezing in the maximum amount of snuggles with him will seem insufficient, because I will forget. Just like we forget the bad things, like contractions and stitches, the memories of the good stuff fade too. That fleeting time when their tiny butt fits into your hand and they're so sleepy that they lay on your chest and snore without any effort, that memory will become distant. All of the times that they pee all over the place and you have to change their clothes and yours at midnight, it will seem like another lifetime ago. And then Timehop will come in, acting like it owns the place, and let you know that guess what? Your kids are growing up! And you can't remember what they used to be before they were wild preschoolers and first graders and third graders, not without all of these old pictures that will make you sad! So we'll help you remember, the only catch is that you will be sad afterwards!
This tiny guy is crawling now, and by the time he's a toddler I'm going to need Timehop and the depression that accompanies it, to remind me of a time when he did not try to eat anything left on the floor or pull my hair. So I guess I won't delete it just yet, maybe next year.
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