Digital Short

I spend a lot of time documenting the goings-on of Walden's everyday life.  I take pictures, I jot down notes in her baby book, I take videos...the usual stuff parents do to remember these precious days that go by way too quickly.  I want to remember every single, little, tiny moment of her life and, consequently, I have about 2.6 million pictures stored on my computer (and that is just since Christmas).  Do I go a bit overboard?  Perhaps.  Do I really need to keep every single picture I take, even the one where her eye is closed, her foot is blurry, and her nose could use a little housekeeping?  Yes, absolutely, I do.  Because those are important moments.

But what about parents?  Who is there to document all the sweet little moments of a new parent's life?  No one, that's who.  And I'm fine with that, mostly.  Because that would mean that I'd have to apply makeup on a regular basis and wear stuff that doesn't involve elastic and really I can't keep that kind of breakneck pace for more than a day or so.  But sometimes I do wish that I had a picture of the times when James and I sneak into Walden's room while she's sleeping and stare and her and smile stupidly at each other.  Or a video of the moment when I've rocked her to sleep and she's making little sleepy noises and I can kiss on her face over and over again and she doesn't even wake up.  Moments that I just want to bottle up and save forever. Every once in a while, either James or I can grab the camera at just the right moment, like this...

snuggle bug

...but it happens very rarely, especially since our girl is constantly on the move these days.  I love pictures of moments like this because then, a long time from now, when Walden is 17 and she asks me if she can stay out past 7:30 just this once and I tell her no, that nothing good can happen at that ungodly hour, and she screams at me and runs to her room and slams the door and blasts an aged, 23 year old Justin Bieber on her iPod,  I can flip through those precious, quiet little moments and remember when she used to need me to cuddle her every once in a while.

But thanks to the advances in technology, there are ways that we can recreate other special moments in our lives as new parents so that we can cherish them forever...

  And then we realize why the show is called Teen Mom, with drama and babbydaddies and punching, and not Appropriately Aged Mom, which is pretty much a snoozefest and apparently involves James wearing a really tight green v-neck, which no one needs to see.

So let's just get back to the regularly scheduled programming and be thankful that there are no camera crews following me around...

up to no good

sweet

first food

avocado face

miss independent

mmmm

big girl