And the year before that, and the year before that…..
Facebook memories brought up a few super cute things today that I couldn’t resist sharing with you guys. I know you’re fully capable of looking back over the years if you so desired, and I’m not trying to cheat and just to a recap post of previous posts. BUT! The kids have changed SO much! And, my goodness, each picture brings back sweet memories for me!
I’m only going to talk about three pictures today, but that’ll take us back three years ago. We’ll start there.
Three years ago I posted this picture.
This was back in the patching stage of the game for Dekker. I’m sure you’ve seen this picture before. More than once, likely. That was a really really hard time for me. For us. Every morning, I pinned that kid down and covered up his good eye. Already being a cautious kid, he turned fearful. He had to wear that stinking thing every waking moment of his day for two whole months. It rocked his world. After his follow up eye appointment, our ophthalmologist said it had made zero improvement, so we were to keep doing it but considerable less aggressively. It went down to one (or two, I can’t remember) hours per day. It was still hard in the morning, but it got WAY easier once he knew it was temporary. I look at him in these pictures, and he was about Rowan’s current age when this all began. It reminds me of how confusing it was for him at the time, and how he couldn’t comprehend it being “good for him,” and how mean I felt. I can now look back at this picture with SO much affection and nostalgia. Not for the time, and not for the difficulty, but for my tough little guy and how he handled such a hard thing like a champ. He would cry and cry and struggle and cry some more, but once that thing was on, it was on, and he left it alone. Many months after the patching stage was over, he found a leftover patch in his room, and told me he remembered wearing them. I asked him what he remembered, and he said “They were ok.” And that was that. My heart is warm. And this will forever be my absolute favorite picture of Dekker with his eye patched. FOREVER. (insert “Sandlot” character here)
Two years ago, I took this picture.
This picture reminds me of a lot of things. Laela is just over one year of age here. She’d been walking for only a couple of months. She wasn’t saying much either, yet she was definitely our earliest talker so far, with very clear “yes” and “no,” and the other basic ones. Here, she is wearing the boots that Solly wears often now. Do you see my sad attempt at a ponytail? She had so little hair at one year, it drove me bonkers. How I wanted to put her hair into something cutesy!! But when I did, this was the best we got, and then the car seat took care of the rest of it. She was SO tiny! Look at her height compared to the cereal box she’s standing beside! Compared to the countertop that she could smoke her head on (and did) at any given moment! She was my one baby who started really big and then almost right away decided to be petite instead. She had great style tho. Still got it!
One year ago, I took this picture. (This is sure a Dekker and Laela post, hey?)
So I’m lying a little bit. This was a video. But I had it on Instagram (and shared onto Facebook) and I couldn’t figure out how to take it from there and put it on here. I didn’t care enough to dig back onto an old hard drive for it, so this picture counts. Both of these kids look SO YOUNG!!! In this picture, we were at our first rental in the whole mess of moving four times last year. House #1. We basically lived on this loveseat. I don’t know why. But I would stretch out across it, and both kids would come running. Dekker would stick his butt between my body and the backrest, and dangle his legs over me, and Laela would sit underneath my legs. It was comfy. Rowan would either be napping, or hanging out in the jumper nearby. He was still quite little when we lived there. In this video, Dekker was helping Laela learn to count to ten. This is a screenshot of their faces when they reached ten, and both looked at me super proud of themselves. Now, Laela is teaching Rowan to count to ten. She’s doing pretty great, actually, and he’s basically got up to five! But in this picture, I see their younger selves, and their positivity. Look at their soft little faces, that have changed so much. Look at Laela’s hair! Its so much longer now! I feel like they just are SO different here, and it was only one year ago. But we’ve done a lot since that picture was taken, and we’ve all aged a good solid year, haha!
Of course I realize, now that the kids are all in bed, that I really should have taken a picture to wrap up this post, aaaaand I didn’t. If I wasn’t a daily blogger, I’d definitely just save this draft and finish it off tomorrow so it would be all put together, but you’re not so lucky, and neither am I. So this is what you get! Just a small handful of memories I would like to reminisce about with you folks. I hope you enjoyed the look back with me!