THE KEEPERS OF BABIES

This post is sponsored by Disney Baby. I'll be joining the Disney Baby blogging team next month, and look forward to sharing these kinds of stories (projects/ideas/etc) with you over there! Stay tuned for more details!

i've come to a conclusion about motherhood. it seems to me that our main job as mothers is to find a way to make our babies stay. to keep their babyhood close, and memorize their every tiny inch. oh sure, we should make sure they're fed and changed, and loved and swaddled, too, but mostly, i think we just need to memorize them from top to bottom. i've started to think there is nothing more important in the whole entire world we could do.

almost as soon as huck was breathing he was changing. too quickly. i had to memorize him. it was my only hope of surviving the emotional turmoil of letting him grow up. 

those cheeks

his little mouth

his long monkey toes and those fat, fat feet

and the elbow dimples. 

i can recreate those elbow dimples on command as i fall asleep at night. 

elbow dimples are the meaning of life, i'm pretty sure of it.

every little fleck in those eyes. get to know them by name.

the double chins, too.

and that spot, right there. 

that spot belongs to mama, nobody else can have it. 

that's the spot where mama's kisses go.

it's important that we memorize every tiny detail, every tiny shift in their tiny little bodies. because we are the keepers of their beginnings. their starts are ours to preserve and cherish. they can't do it for themselves, those silly little babies. they're too busy growing up, too busy escaping those precious first months, too busy racing blindly away from that soft, squishy start. these little babies grow too fast. they've moved beyond before they ever even started. 

so this is our job, mamas. we are the keepers of babies. 

babies don't keep. so we do.