With my long commute to work and back, I often have extra time to ponder (only if Matthew is sleeping of course. Otherwise I have to talk to him and entertain him.) Anyway, I have been thinking about all the things that I have learned as a mom and all the things I wish I had known before embarking on this motherhood journey. There are lots of tidbits that I heard before Matthew arrived that are valuable, whether I believed so at the time or not: sleep when he sleeps (heard that countless times, but still couldn't seem to do it), clean later, cherish the baby days because they are too short (I realize this more and more with each passing day). And things I now realize: my patience has seemed to grow, my ability to get everything done has disappeared, my brain thinks of Matthew first in every situation, nothing about my kid grosses me out, things I would never tolerate from other children doesn’t cause me to bat an eye when Matthew does it.
But of all the things that I have learned or been told, my most valuable piece of advice is: Take pictures. If there were ever anything that I wanted to tell another mother, it is that. Sometime at a later date, these images will become so precious and priceless to you that you would be willing to take on a burning building, an angry bear, or a psycho-serial killer to save them.
I have heard so many people (myself included) who say things along the lines of “I wish I had a picture of him at that age,” or “I wish I had a photo of him doing this,” or “I wish I could show you what you looked like when ….” I believe that you can’t take too many pictures. You don’t have to print them all, but you will want to save them all. The first 6 months of Matthew’s life I took at least 150 pictures EACH month. (I know that sounds crazy, but it is the truth.) I still average nearly 100 photos per month now and Matthew is 17 months old. And there are still moments that I don’t have captured on film. I wish that I had taken more pictures of him with his Grandma Cathy before she passed away. And I can’t go back and get those priceless images to preserve for Matthew.
So fellow Mommies remember that kids change before your very eyes, and our memories are faulty, even if we don’t believe them to be. It doesn’t matter if you are a good photographer or if you have an expensive camera, you can preserve these priceless memories. I enjoy looking at photos from my childhood and many of them are grainy or blurry. But enough of the image exists for it to spark a memory for me or my family in order to tell the story.
I have tried to stage some really cute and artsy photos to take of Matthew. That generally doesn’t work. And many of the photos I take are a split second too late to get the face or smile I am trying to capture. And I have learned that Matthew is generally too quick to catch good images of. But I still snap the shots and save them. My point is don’t get wrapped up in taking perfect photos just TAKE THEM.
Someday when your son towers over you or your daughter is putting on makeup, you will be able to see your babies any time you want, at any stage of their lives you want. Someday, you will miss those grubby little faces covered in spaghetti sauce and the skinned knees and messy hair. Taking pictures ensures you will never have to let those memories fade.
Speaking of pictures, I finally got around to getting Matthew’s one year portraits made. I was only 4 months late. And wouldn’t you know a week after I got the prints back daycare had a photographer come in to take the kids’ portraits. As horrible as this sounds, I kind of hope that the images from daycare aren’t too spectacular. Because then I will definitely want to buy them and I just bought the others. I can’t seem to resist pictures of my son. I think that is all mothers, which is probably why the photographer comes to daycare twice a year. Anyway the pictures from Wal-mart turned out OK. Matthew didn’t want to smile really. But at least he didn’t cry.
We had Matthew’s picture made with Brian and Gene to get 3 generations of Stanley men in a photo together. That was one thing that Grandma Cathy had wanted us to do from the time that Matthew was born. I am sorry that she didn’t get to see the finished product.
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