Hey! What about ME?

I need to tell you something.  It’s something about motherhood that causes me severe agida.

Baby books.

I’m a huge journaler.  Is that even a word?  But you know what I mean.  Perhaps it’s my Mormon heritage.  Journaling is encoded in our DNA, you know?  That and green Jell-O salad with mini marshmallows, shredded carrots and grapes.  Hey!  It’s a thing.  Jell-O salad and Funeral Potatoes.

But anyway.  I must document.  First words, photos and eventually, locks of hair.  Would it bother you tremendously if I told you we’ve kept the clips that went on our kids’ belly buttons after the umbilical cord was cut?

I know!  Where does collector end and hoarder begin?

Keeping a baby book stresses me out! With Violet, I kept a baby book calendar thingy and wrote monthly updates on my personal blog, The Girl Who. But I’m already falling far behind with Henry. Hell, I haven’t even started! Which is understandable considering I have two kids to wrangle every day. Still, that’s not fair to the little guy! He deserves to have his life chronicled too.

So I stress about it and do nothing. I haven’t even really blogged about Henry yet because I’m so busy writing other stuff. Stuff like this. Oh my God! I’m writing about how I have no time to write about Henry. What a loser. But see what I mean?

I was reading Dear Diary, I Can’t Stand Being Pregnant and I’m thinking, check this Kimberly chick out. She’s even chronicling her pregnancy. I couldn’t even bring myself to do that. Then I got to the end of her article:

In the first year of my son’s life, I made exactly four entries in the journal. Watch him while he slept? Ha! Those precious moments were reserved for showering, napping, and e-mailing baby pictures. When he was awake, I wanted to hold him, not a pen. By the end of the day, I was too tired to write, even if I could find the journal under the mountains of toys, laundry, unopened mail, tiny socks, and dirty dishes.

Exactly, Kimberly, EXACTLY! Baby books are worse for guilt than religion. At least once a day I’m struck by the thunderbolt of Oh-damn-I-haven’t-taken-enough-photos-of-Henry-and-he’s-already-getting-so-big-and-I-didn’t-note-his-first-bath-on-the-calendar-was-that-Monday-or-Wednesday-all-the-days-are-running-together-what-day-is-it-oh-geez-he’s-going-to-hate-me-when-he’s-grown…

So yeah. There’s that little daily torture that comes along with second kid territory.  But I can’t let it go.

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