I have baby books for all of the kids. Keaton’s is completely filled out. Everything from the first year of his life documented with photos and dates and all the juicy details. Skyler & Spencer’s books are filled out for the first three months [while I was home on maternity leave]. And Caleb’s? Well let’s just leave it at, he has a baby book.

On a side note, when Keaton was born I had his pictures [professionally] taken every three months the first year, every six months the next year and then yearly until he started school. For Skyler & Spencer we did photos every three months until they were one. Then, well, then their next pictures were at preschool. We got Caleb’s pictures taken at three months and then again…um..never. His next pictures were at preschool. And to be honest, I really procrastinated on his three month pictures. I took him to a one hour photo studio over my lunch break the day before his cleft lip surgery because I wanted to make sure I had professional pictures before his surgery.

Needless to say [Don't you just hate "needless to say? If it's needless to say then why say it? And yet here I am saying it. Oh well.] So anyway, needless to say, I kind of dropped the ball when it comes to Caleb. But what Caleb has that the other kids don’t have is an online journal. Back then it was a lovely page of text where you scrolled forever to get to the bottom of the page. Pretty. Then I got all high tech and added a next page link. Of course I hand coded the whole thing. And it took me days. But it got the job done. My family could go to our website and see what happened at my pregnancy doctor’s appointments, read his birth story and read about his next milestone.

A couple years ago I started keeping track of his milestones in Blogger. Over the weekend I decided to spend a good five hours adding all of the “entries” from my hand coded awful looking web page to his Blogger site. I’m not sure this weekend, while I was still misty-eyed from the start of kindergarten, was a good day for that. I had totally forgotten about how Lee would find Caleb sitting up in his crib, but it was weeks before we “caught” him sitting himself up. I had no idea it took a week before I could get one small bowl of cereal in him instead of on him. Or that he got his first big bout of diaper rash after eating carrots. He’s gotten so big. When did my baby become this little man? Somebody hand me a tissue.

I know. I know. Can I get some cheese with my whine?

After you have a baby there are a bunch of “firsts.” There’s the first bath. The first trip out of the house. The first holiday. The first tooth. The first time they eat cereal. And then baby food. And then table food. The first time they roll over. Followed by sitting up. Then crawling. And finally walking.

But then we go through a big lull where they already know the basics and we’re just hanging out. There are still a few firsts, like when he dresses himself for the first time [even if it is a green pair of shorts with a Spiderman pajama top and Bert & Ernie slippers] or goes potty on the toiler or learns to write his name, but generally the firsts start to slow down.

And then kindergarten comes. And the firsts start all over again. The first time he rides the bus. The first time he eats in the cafeteria. The first PE class. Or art class. Or music class. His first word in Spanish that wasn’t taught by Dora. The first nap on his new towel with his name embroidered on it. Every day [now that we are two days in to the school year] he comes home and says, “today we go to…” He’s so excited about all his new firsts. It makes a mama so proud.

And tonight he had one more first. His very first soccer game.

Like a total slacker mom I forgot my camera. [Actually I came directly from work and didn't have time to stop home to grab my camera. But if I had been thinking I would have taken my camera to work with me this morning.] So this is a shot of him on a water break at his very first soccer game, taken with my cell phone. In his very first soccer shirt. Wearing his very first pair of soccer cleats and shin guards. Please join me in a collective “Aaaahhhh!”

This entry was posted on Monday, August 20th, 2007 at 9:52 pm and is filed under A day in our life. Comments are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.