what we don't have

Hey, it's been awhile since I've been on here! Is anyone still out there? Are those crickets I hear?

I have a number of things swimming around in my head that I want to write about -- all of which I am sure the world will find incredibly fascinating and, therefore, must be shared. So where to begin? How about with a realization. . .

So, I'm rocking E to sleep last night and it dawns on me that it has been 5 months since we first learned of him. He was 14 months when we saw his picture back in September, and he is now 19 months. What a big boy he is becoming! As I gazed at his beautiful, precious face (made more precious by the fact that he was sleeping and not yelling) I suddenly thought of S and wondered what she looked like as a baby. We have no idea what she looked like before the age of 3 and we never will. No baby pictures.

But there is more than that. For neither child do we have memories of first steps, first teeth, first haircuts or other typical baby firsts. E is still babyish enough that we can get a sense of what he looked like in his infancy. Not so for S. Our 3.5 yo girl is so capable and independent that it is hard to imagine her as a helpless baby, and I'm finding it hard to develop a mental picture of her as a tiny tot.

So what happens down the road? The day will come when she will realize that we have no pictures of her as a baby. We have no stories of her as a baby. We have no things of hers from when she was a baby. We have . . . nothing of her as a baby. That's going to be a tough one.

All along I've been lamenting the fact that we have more background info on the little ones than we have for our big kid. I had completely overlooked that we have something for him that we don't have for S or even somewhat for E: Knowledge of his babyhood. Just as we have had to deal with some tough issues of loss with J, I know that we will do the same for S and E. It just may be that the issues will be a tad different.

As always, something to think about.