How to Take a Mental Memory Picture

Jenocide (see nickname tab) shared a treasure with me this morning on facebook. This picture is just so precious to me. We are each holding one of our own children, and one of the other's.

That's Tiny Transporter right there in my arms, in one of my favorite outfits of his, the jeans overalls. I'm also holding her youngest. The picture just brought me to tears. Those tiny boys are so grown up now. That's OYT screaming his head off in her arms. He screamed a LOT as a child. She's holding her oldest, too.

Seeing this picture reminded me of a habit I developed when they were young. (This was before digital cameras...) I didn't take a lot of pictures because money was tight and developing film was expensive. Then there's the part about if you have two children under 3, you rarely have your hands free to take a picture. Not to mention, the moment you want probably includes YOU. So no picture.

What I would do instead is take a mental picture. Purposefully say to myself, “Remember this moment. It's rare. They're growing up too fast. REMEMBER.” I'd like to share one of those moments with you.

I'm a mountain biker (or was, before all these breathing issues) so when The Transporter was born, I got a Burley bike trailer and took him with me. We upgraded to a double when OYT joined us. We went all over town, exploring and finding ways to connect the pieces of the (now finally connected) developing bike path being built.

By the time of this mental picture, the boys are almost too old for me to drag them around. They barely fit in the trailer anymore, and were too tall to put the mesh protector down. (Yeah, probably illegal...but they were wearing the seatbelts and bike helmets. You know about my bike helmet thing...)

Imagine a 5 1/2 year old Transporter, well, you don't have to imagine, I do have this:

and a 3 year-old OYT:

crammed into a Burley trailer. The Transporter is wearing neon-green sunglasses, much too big for him. He insisted on bringing Woody (of Toy Story fame) with him. We are going down our favorite hill at a speed that causes them to giggle and scream with roller-coaster glee. The Transporter has Woody outside the trailer, flying like Buzz would, and asks me to turn around and look. I do. And wish for my camera. But at 20 mph (which is really fast on a bike with a trailer and 80 pounds of boys) it's a quick glance and no way would I have been able to capture that shot. So I took it in my head.

I can see it clearly to this day. The silly grins on their faces, poor Woody flying along beside the trailer, and I can still hear their delight at the adventure we were having.

Do you have any mental pictures you'd like to share? Or are you one of those perfect parents who has pictures AND video of every milestone?

~Tina

O ~ Oh The Relief!

These are the continuing adventures of a Swedish immigrant during her first year as an American. She boldly went where she'd never gone before...please come along on Adventures in America.

Last hip story, I promise. It's just that I'm writing about one year in my life, and a 1/3 of it was in that darn cast...but I feel like I can't leave you with me still immobilized. Closure and all that stuff.

I can't remember the exact date they cut me out of my prison, but it was in March. Silly me had expected instant relief and instant return to normality. Not so fast. What I saw when they removed the cast shocked me. My legs were covered in what looked like wax. Dead skin. It would take a LOT of scrubbing to get it off.

The other big surprise was that the knee which hadn't bent in four months, didn't really want to bend without severe pain. I had to be really careful and move it slowly, and just a little more each day. But oh the joy and relief of being able to take a bath! (Even if there was a layer of dead skin floating on top of the water when I was done...sorry, reality...) I could also scratch anything I needed to. Oh the contraptions Aunt Risky tried to make me to get inside the cast to scratch...partially successful, but you know how ALMOST getting to scratch an itch is almost worse than not getting to scratch it at all.

So to wrap this up: I spent 6 weeks on crutches, then a month feeling great and walking around, and RUNNING, and life felt normal.

Then the pins came out. 8 weeks of crutches. It was the most uncomfortable time. I felt so fragile – like if I moved wrong I was going to break it all over again. Then I was free. Big scar. Lots of life to contemplate, but the big ordeal was OVER.

I went on to become a gymnast, a long distance runner, a mountain biker, I climbed a 14er (for you non-Colorado folks, that's a mountain over 14,o00 feet. It's a status symbol to summit one. Kinda a rite of passage to be a “real” Coloradan). I RECOVERED.