As I was reading through the blogs I follow this morning, I came across this post from Jill at Baby Rabies.  Like me, she’s a mom of two little ones.  In it, she shared a video of herself reading a post that she wrote last summer, A Letter To My 51 Year Old Self.  I remember reading the post last summer and I can’t remember what I did five minutes ago half the time, it really resonated with me.  If you’re a mom, I urge you to read it.

In her letter, Jill reminds her future self of how hard these days were, how tired she was, and how much her children challenged her.  She reminds herself of how overwhelmed she was, both with the responsibility of raising her little ones and with how much she loved and needed them.  She talks about snuggling nose-to-nose with her 4-year-old in bed at night and how her 18-month-old’s head smells when she rests her head on top of it.  She reminds herself that she was aware of how fast her little ones were growing, how she searched so hard for the emergency brake, and how despite her best efforts, there’s no way to freeze time.

As a mom, it’s so easy to take these little things for granted.  The days feel so long sometimes and you think you can enjoy those snuggles forever, but then you remember.. it seems like just a month or two ago that you were snuggling your sweet newborn baby for the very first time and then in the blink of an eye, you’re sitting at the dinner table having a conversation with him about what kind of backpack he wants to get for Kindergarten and you’re left wondering.. where did the time go?

Jill’s post post really got me thinking.  There are so many little things that my kids say and do right now that I know I will forget in twenty years.  Maybe even twenty minutes.. if we’re being honest.  I don’t want to forget these things, I don’t want to take these moments with my babies for granted.  I want to remember all of the sweet things that Braden says to me at night when we are snuggling.  I want to remember how kind he is to his baby sister, how much he helps me with her and how he sticks up for her.  I want to remember Mackenzie’s crazy belly laugh and the way she shrugs her shoulders to protect her little neck from the kisses I can’t seem to stop giving her.  I want to remember the way she rolls over every morning when she’s finished nursing and calls for her daddy and how her “Bubba” is the center of her world.  I don’t want to forget.

One of my favorite things about getting together with my family, is when my grandparents, aunts, and uncles tell my cousins and I stories about the things they remember about us from our childhood.  I want to be able to do that for my kids, but I feel like there is just so much that I forget.  I thought it would be nice to take time each week to remember the little things, the things that seem so mundane, the things that make me laugh.. even the things that make me cry.  I know I’ll enjoy looking back on them as Braden and Mackenzie get older and I hope they will too.  I know that I, for one, love hearing my Granny tell me about how cute I was prancing around the house after my bath telling everyone to kiss my pretty hiney.  Who wouldn’t?

Naturally, since this is my first time doing this, I have a list a mile long of things I want to remember.  I tried to limit it..  You would seriously laugh if you saw my list though.  It makes me happy to know that I’ll have a lot of the adorable little things they say and do documented now.

Braden is quite possibly one of the sweetest 5-year-old boys I’ve ever met.  I know all the moms say that about their boys too, but this kid.. his heart is just so big.  He takes his role as a big brother seriously too.  Last night, the three of us were laying in our bed and Mackenzie was nursing.  She kept biting me and laughing so I got frustrated and sat her beside me and told her that if she was going to bite, she wasn’t getting mama’s milk.  Cue the tears.  Meltdown city.

Braden scooted closer to her and started rubbing her back and said “It’s okay Mackenz, don’t cry darlin’” and then looks at me with those big brown eyes and says “Mama, can you please just give her another chance?  She’s so sad, she won’t bite you again.”  How sweet is he?  Seriously.  He’s gotten into the habit of calling Mackenzie “Mackenz” too.  It’s beyond adorable, mostly because he’s the only one who does it.  In the past, he’s always referred to her as his baby or “Darlin’”, but lately he’s all about calling her “Mackenz”.

Mackenzie has become quite the little chatterbox.  I feel like overnight she’s gone from a cooing little infant to this sassy little toddler walking around telling us what to do like she owns the place.  I have no clue where she gets it from.  I swear

As I mentioned above, she’s started biting while nursing and she thinks it is the funniest thing.  After bath time, we get snuggled up in bed and she crawls over to me and asks for her milk.  I ask her which side and she makes this whole big production over deciding with this silly grin on her face.  Once she lays down and gets settled, she looks up at me with a little grin and those big blue eyes and says “milk peas!”  As soon as I start to undo the hook on my nursing tank top, she yanks it down, grabs me and yells “MINE!” and laughs.  We go back and forth arguing over who it belongs to until she finally decides she’s ready to eat.  Since we’ve been having the biting issue, I often ask her if she’s going to bite.  She gets this sly little grin and says “yeaaah”.  She knows better and she’s playing when she does it.. but still, it hurts.

My goal was to breastfeed exclusively ’til she was one.. then to see how it went after that.  She’ll be two next week and we’re down to nursing twice a day (right when she wakes up and at bedtime) and I have no clue how we’re going to wean her.  She’s a little milk monster and is so stubborn.  It’ll be interesting, that’s for sure.

So, what are the things that you want to remember this week?  It doesn’t just have to be about your kids – what are the things going on in your life right now that make you happy?  That you’d want to tell yourself about, if you were talking to yourself in 20 years?

Also, I never heard back from the winner of the Aquaphor giveaway, so I drew a new winner.  Congratulations to Lori Barbley!  Please shoot me an email with your mailing address and we’ll get your prize pack in the mail!  If I don’t hear from Lori by Monday at 9AM, I’ll draw another winner.  Thanks to everyone for participating — don’t forget to like Aquaphor on Facebook to get some great coupons!