Present or Captured

Saturday mornings we like to take it easy, lounge around and eat breakfast and drink coffee while watching music videos on VH1 (yes, there's a station that actually plays music videos!). Well, a new Ed Sheeran song was set to video clips of him growing up, capturing small yet big moments like walking, crawling, and early music lessons. Totally a cute video, yet it sent me into a momentary panic as I couldn't remember taking any videos of P these past 16 months.

And then I got so sad. It's too late to catch up. You can't turn back the clock and relive such wonderful moments. (We know this all too well, unfortunately.)

Of course, upon checking the video section of my phone, I found more videos than I had remembered taking. Whew!

I really do take so many pictures, and even videos. At times I have to force myself to put down my phone and just enjoy the moment. But I so desperately want to capture it all, to preserve it and hold onto it for, well, forever. Of course, the memories are in my mind and my heart, but memories fade over time.

(And of course, another fact we know all too well.) And so I find myself caught between being present in each moment and needing to capture them to be able relive them over and over again. The only thing that brings me to put my phone down and stop snapping pictures and taking videos is thinking about generations past. What did they have? Maybe a family portrait once in their life time? A few times if they were lucky? Many people today don't find themselvesdrowning  in photos, either. I remember a coworker telling me she has 20 photos from her wedding and that was just all you got back then (in the 80s). In this digital age, we received over 1,500 to go through and choose from. Overwhelming to the point that I still don't have a wedding album put together.

And on the flip side, the few precious moments captured with Korbin are already carefully scrapbooked, and copied and saved everywhere possible.

This just fuels my desire to capture every fleeting moment, because you never know when or if you'll get creamed by a semi (morbid, but that is honestly how I look at life these days, no regrets as tomorrow I could get creamed...). I'm just so afraid of missing something, or forgetting completely.

I guess there really isn't any right way to go about this. I'll capture moments and I'll let moments slip by. And I'll treasure every second of them, relivable or not.

Because I got a lotta love to give.

Baby Clothes

Man, who knew going through and passing on baby clothes could be so emotional? Well, I guess I kind of knew. I remember my dad having us sit down with my step mom to go through all of Sarah's and Roland's baby clothes to donate stuff. She got so upset, and understandably so, as she'd just had her third or fourth miscarriage in just a few short years. She wasn't ready to be done just yet.

I gave all of Ps clothes to Chelsea, knowing full well she may have a girl. But I guess a part of me wanted her to have a boy just so I could selfishly still be attached to those precious outfits somehow. She's had her beautiful little girl now, and so the majority of the clothes just aren't quite girly enough. No big deal, I know some other pregnant friends who will need boy clothes. I'd so rather they get the clothes than donate them. At least I could still see an outfit or two. But I can't really ask for them back now. Not like I felt I could with Chelsea.

The hardest part is coming to the realization that I most likely don't need them back. I want them, because I'm not done. But we don't even know if we could 'safely' try to have even just one more kiddo. We're working on figuring that all out, but until then, we are technically done. And I'm having such a hard time with that.

The clothes are so much more than bags of clothes. They're a chapter we're probably already done with. It's a hard chapter, one I feel I could do again, but Ry isn't so sure (in fact, he knows he couldn't). It's just such an emotional place to be.

I cried huge alligator tears yesterday, my heart heavy knowing all of this. I'm just not done yet.

Because I gotta love to give.