July 31 2009 Ways to keep track

It's interesting to take pictures of the kids as they grow. It's interesting to be able to see them do tasks they couldn't do before. It's interesting to study their drawings and how their perception has changed. But I think a simple nostalgic way to keep a memory of the kids as they grow is to look at the clothes they once wore. Once, they were small enough to fit in these shoes. Once they were small enough to wear that hat, or those pants. They were tiny, and they've grown. It's very simplistic, but once you see the old outfit, you recall an instance when they wore it and it's a lot easier to remember more about them and their character just by recalling the memory, the resource of what you have in your head as opposed to what you managed to catch on film.

My little girl wanted a special dress to wear to a wedding tomorrow. I went to the box of hand me downs and saw her now-twelve-year-old cousin in my mind's eye wearing this dress as I slipped it over my only-six-year-old daughter's head. Once that tall independent girl wore this dress, and one day my girl will be tall and independent, too, but first she gets to wear the dress.

My son is wearing hand-me-downs from a friend who is not even three yet, and it's different remembering the last time I saw these jammies on a kid who couldn't even talk yet, and seeing them on my boy who is writing stories, or at least the best parts he can of stories.

One day a younger/smaller kid than mine will wear one of these two things and I will remember today and the way my daughter looked and the goofy dance my son did, in these clothes. It's just a moment in time, when they're just big enough.



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Thanks for playing mad-libs this month. Stay tuned for August's project.