Asher "took his first step" on Wednesday. Actually, he sort of lunged for Liz and moved his foot out in front of himself before falling, but it was enough to pass for the beginnings of a step....
Which got me thinking about Iris first learning to walk.
So I pulled up the video of Iris learning to walk and taking her first consecutive steps. Because we used to videotape things like that. We used to get the camcorder out for all sorts of things. Even for uneventful things. I don't know how many countless hours of footage we have of just Iris playing at the apartment. Timm would get the camcorder out and just sit there, silently videotaping and Iris is cooing and gurgling and toddling and making faces at herself in the screen. It is precious, because I barely remember her as anything other than the talkative, inquisitive, sensitive, creative whirlwind she has been lately.
And I never realized just how similar she and Asher are at one year old! I don't see it so much in a still photograph, but watching her in motion as a pre-toddler, it is uncanny.
And I wish I would get the camcorder out to capture those ordinary moments of Asher. I just don't think about it. Or when I do think about it, the battery is dead, or I can't find a disc, or some catastrophe occurs as soon as I am out of eyesight in search of the camcorder and I abandon the idea.
Today was a day that the thought crossed my mind to record the evening. To record it and keep it and remember it clearly. It was just perfect:
Sitting in the middle of the yard, on the grass. The sky was blue and there was a chill in the air despite the bright sunlight. It was breezy. Asher was crawling all over the yard, which he never does because he's funny about grass, then making a beeline straight for me so he could climb into my lap and show me a leaf, saying "oooh, oh!" Iris was laying next to me in the grass and said, "I could lay like this, and watch the sun go by, forever."
And I thought, I want to remember this. I want to remember my babies like this. I want to remember feeling like this, sitting in the grass surrounded by fading yellow sunlight and giggles.
Why do I always forget how precious they are?
And I guess I don't need the camcorder to remember these little moments... I can write them down. And I can try as hard as I can to file away in my mind every detail so that I might be able to pull it back up and replay the memories when they get so grown up I don't see the baby in them anymore.
It was a lovely evening, this evening.
I'm so glad you wrote it down. I know you're a photographer but if you ever consider a second career, it should be writing....love it.
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