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  Last night we read a book to the kids called "God Gave Us You".  The story is about a young bear cub asking his mother questions about where she comes from.  THey talk about how the mother's tummy grew and how they were excited to hear the heartbeat and decorate the nursery. Each page ends with the words "God Gave Us You".  It's quite lovely and prompted Matthew to ask about how he was in my tummy and whether he cried when he came out, etc.  I told him that we could look at pictures and I'd tell him the story.  Hanging on the wall in Ben's room (oddly enough, because it used to be Matthew's room when he was a baby) is a picture collage of some maternity portraits I had taken. Matthew was fascinated to see my big belly and the ultrasound picture.  Then we went to his room where we looked at the handprints I have hanging on his wall – one for birth, one for 6 months and one for one year.  He loved comparing how big his hands were now compared to that.  Then we sat down and got out the photo album of all of the hospital pictures and newborn pictures of him when he was born.

The entire time I had two disinct feelings – sweet memories and guilt. Memories that came flooding back as we looked through the photos and keepsakes and guilt that while I had all of that for Matthew, I dont' have much for Ben.

I fell victim to the "second child syndrome" and never got around to having maternity portraits taken (and I was as big as a house and didn't really want to capture that on film forever) and never got around to doing the handprints for each month.  I have plenty of photos but none of them are in albums. I never filled out a baby book.  When Matthew turned 1 I did a video of music and photos of his first year with funny captions, etc. Guess what….never did that for Ben.

I suck.

Thank god Ben isn't at the age yet where he's asking to see "his stuff". But what do I do when he is? I supose I can go back and put the pictures in the album, fill out the baby book and make a video. But I certainly can't get those handprints again or those portraits.

If I could give advice to any mom out there, it would be to take the time to preserve memories because you can't go back and have a do-over.  I wish I had taken the time.

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