Lost and Found

I've completed scrapbooks for each of my children's first years of their lives. It isn't an easy task, not like doing a traditional baby book where all you do is fill in the blanks, but it is so rewarding to see them scan the bookshelf for "their book" and devour the pages like they are the most delicious thing they've ever tasted.

McRae's book contains the very first scrapbook page that I ever created.

While it is a little embarrassing now to look at, I've been told by several people that it must remain in it's original form because it documents not only those early days of his life, but the beginning of my craft. Whatever. I still laugh when I see it with all the stickers and pictures edged with decorative scissors.

Let's just say that my craft has become a lot less busy and a lot more simple. And I like it that way. I like the pictures to speak for themselves and not the adornments.

Katie's book is a testament to that.

However, there was something that troubled me about her book when I was finishing it up at my last scrapbook retreat (otherwise known as the weekend mommy drinks wine with her best friend and takes a nap whenever she pleases while daddy stays home with the kids). Katie's book had far less pictures in it than her brothers'.

I tried to compensate for the fact that it seemed to be missing a lot of pictures from the time when she was 2-6 months-old with the lists that I kept of her first foods and other notes I'd scribbled about her development.

I wondered if I simply didn't take pictures of my daughter because that was the age when she suffered miserably from colic. I thought I had taken pictures on the rare occasions when she wasn't sleeping or eating and was actually happy, but I did not find them anywhere. I was a little sad about the lack of photographic evidence from that time in her life, but hearing other mothers talk about third babies being lucky to have one picture to document their babyhood made me think that it was normal.

So I completed her book and presented it to her. She smoothed her hand over the pink cover, gazed up at me and said, "This is mine? All mine, mommy?"

"It's all yours baby girl," I told her.

We put it on the shelf next to the others and she brings it out whenever someone new comes over, orders them to sit on the couch and proceeds to share with them, her book, all hers. Nobody ever asks about the missing photos . . .

Last night I went upstairs to get something and I noticed a white box on our bed labeled "green box, frames and other stuff." It had been buried deep in my husband's closet and likely had been there since we moved when Katie was 6 months-old.

I opened the lid and saw the picture taken of us at the beach when I was in college . . . I had completely forgotten about that photo and it's beautiful, ornate silver frame that I used to display so proudly.

I saw the green box described in the labeling, which was made of jade and given to me by my husband to hold my treasures in when we were very young. I had forgotten all about it.

There were notes that I'd passed him in high school, which I still haven't read.

A large red envelope, the kind you get from the photo lab, was also inside. I opened it up and there, in sets of twos, were the missing months of my daughter's infanthood. There were pictures of her under her baby gym with a brother on each side (they were all so little!). There were pictures of her having her first bite of rice cereal. There were pictures of her sleeping in her car seat and pictures of her blowing bubbles.

And she wasn't crying from colic in any of them!

Dang! I guess this means I'll have to re-do her book now.