Soaking Up Every Moment

I suppose I have always been a writer. I love pens, notebooks, journals, and planners. Let’s be real, part of the reason I love teaching is the pens. Felt tip, sharpie, gel, ball point, and all the colors. I grade in all the colors, I plan in all the colors, I color code my planners and notebooks. Soaking up every moment comes when I put those pretty pens to paper and make lists and write and plan.

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As a kid I always kept a journal. I tried to get my mom to throw them out when they were moving but somehow this mysterious bin full of unfinished journals, softball trophies, and a paper mache dog head made its way to my garage. When life became busy with my graduate program, moving to North Carolina, and the general demands of being a high school teacher, journaling and writing pretty much disappeared from my life. The writing I did was all for school, and while it’s fun to plan curriculum, I’ve found so much more fulfillment in writing for fun again. Even if that writing takes place at 1am with a sleepy baby on my boob.

When I found out I was pregnant in January of 2019 I knew immediately I wanted to remember everything. A friend of mine told me she had a baby book and she occasionally journals special moments and milestones with her daughter. She only wished she had started doing it earlier. Well, I loved the idea of journaling and found this beautiful baby book journal. It’s not a huge baby book covered in pastels and baby giraffes. It’s just a plain grey book journal on the outside, but on the inside?

It may have been those early pregnancy hormones but I cried when I got it in the mail. Like full on ugly cried when I got it. This guided book of prompts about your baby spans pregnancy to 18 years old. It was then that I realized what I had gotten myself into. It wasn’t just about recording what I was feeling or how much he weighed at each doctor visit. It was about who he was going to be as a person. He was going to be a person, a teenager, a grown man with likes, dislikes, and opinions. In that moment I saw my future baby grown up and imagined what he would be like and pretty much lost it. Thinking about it now still chokes me up because it’s all happening so fast. 

I try to write in his baby journal at least once a month. I love that it has a short series of questions to answer and I’m not overworking my mom brain trying to remember every detail unprompted. I love that I can journal in short spurts in between naps and nursing without feeling like I’ll never finish. I love that I have this whole book of his life to scribble down our adventures and see how we grow as a family throughout it. I like that the photo albums that chronicle his growth and every tiny event in his life are separate from the details and emotions of raising him. It’s not all about pretty pictures and milestones with this journal. It’s about feeling connected to him now and as he grows. Journaling allows me to soak up every moment and remember it before my mom brain inevitably loses and blurs them as the days become weeks and weeks become years. I’ll hold on to those feelings as long as I can preserve them.