Lucas took the kids up to his parents yesterday... for the night. His parents needed some help moving furniture around, and the timing was perfect for a daddy and Fynn and Paige excursion, leaving me at home with ample time to pack and sort and get ready for the end of the month.
And so I sorted and packed and sorted and packed some more. I started in the kids room, taking pictures down, wall decals... shadow boxes with birth announcements and hospital bracelets and hats. Over the last few years I've been selective of what I've held on to... knowing the memories and spaces in our hearts are more important than the things.
I made my way to the kids book shelves. I touched spines of board books and picture books, looking for the old and the worn, the ones with pages stuck together and ripped out. There were several that got tossed. The cheapies from Targets Dollar Spot, the outgrown and overused. And then there was one, of course, that brought on a lump in my throat.
Sandra Boynton's Going To Bed Book.
For Fynn's first year or so of life, we read that book every night before bed. Lucas, Fynn and myself would snuggle on our bed, legs touching, arms around one another. A simple routine...
The book made it through the sorting. It's packed, ready for our new home. I'm not sure it will last much longer, but I couldn't bring myself to throw that book, chewed on spine and all, out. That book brings back so many memories of such a simple time for our family. I've talked about it before, but we lived five minutes from where Lucas worked, he walked to work every day. Fynn and I spent our days walking through the neighborhood, playing on the floor, doing laundry, watching bad daytime TV... we were always together and we often looked like this:
Sweetness. Bliss. Snuggles.
While parts of those early days with my baby are fuzzy, I remember how he felt on my chest. Those endless hours on our couch nursing and sleeping and nursing and cuddling and nursing and playing and nursing and baby laughs.
And nursing. I miss that closeness. With Fynn, with Paige, I just miss it. Yes, they're close to me, but that connection... it was so intense and special for me and the kids. The basis for the connection I have with them now.
Anyway.
I don't spend a lot of time reminiscing about the early days with Fynn, it just doesn't come up on a daily basis in my mind. I'm so focused on our family of FOUR I often forget we were ever a family of THREE. But when I do think about it, I can't help but get the warm and fuzzies, and want to snuggle my now four year old close and hear him laugh. I can still hear the baby giggles in him...