Firsts - A Writing Motherhood Post & Chat

Today is the Writing Motherhood Post & Chat - a day when a circle of blogs will be blogging about "firsts" - first words, first steps, first days of school, first days without kids... in response to a writing prompt in Lisa Garrigues' book Writing Motherhood.  You can win a copy of the book, by linking your firsts at any of the blogs listed at Mom Blog Marketing.

At my house, firsts are as important as they've ever been, but their recording has dwindled.

I chronicled all of Bella's first dutifully, as I imagined my mother in law did with her sons. First smile, first tooth, first word - nothing was too trivial - I have them all neatly documented, often with pictures in Bella's baby book. I have a wrinkled and grease-stained piece of paper with dozens of words and dates as I tracked Bella's expanding vocabulary, early proof that I had given birth to a genius. Pictures capture her first carousel ride, her first birthday party. My camera captured my adorable little Bella on her big day, but my more experienced mother eyes now see a baby in a purple gingham smocked dress obviously overwhelmed by all the fuss. It's all in the book, painstakingly documented.

Jack has a book too. He actually has three, but two are blank. Only one has any writing or objects in it. The hospital gave it to us, all personalized with his birth information. I filled it during my last morning there, waiting for Steve to pick us up to take us home. Jack was already dressed in his gender neutral preemie onesie and sleeping soundly in Bella's hand-me-down car seat. I took the matching picture to Bella's hospital departure shot, packed our bags, and then used the rest of my free time, the last I would have for a long long time, to start his baby book. I filled out all I had learned about him in our first 72 hours together: his name, his birth weight, and his birth length. I slipped in the ink print of his tiny little feet and the hideous sample of his nursery picture. Then I closed the book. In the next few months, I hurriedly tucked in a few items so they wouldn't get thrown out: his rainbow-striped hospital cap, our hospital bracelets, and even a couple of pictures from his birth, but I never wrote in it again.

All of Juliette's books are blank. I just carry in my head the certainty that most of her firsts were earlier than her siblings. I celebrated Jack and Juliette's milestones just as much to their face, but I only captured my first's firsts.