forgetting and remembering

I was looking through my blog today, searching for a specific picture and came across this gem - 

and more from this post and I can NOT get over it. I posted it on instagram and kept going back to look at it all day long. It is just so funny. He has no neck and not only does it look like he is about to bust out of his clothes, it looks like he is going to bust out of his skin. I look at this picture and all at once I remember 15 months ago. I remember squeezing those arms and legs. I remember kissing those rough red cheeks. I remember rubbing that soft round head. I remember his squishy but very heavy body being held in my arms curving around my stomach (that has been made soft by he and his siblings) as I patted his bum and bounced him into dreamland. I remember trying all kinds of oils and lotions to get rid of his rashy cheeks. I remember letting him gum on my knuckles. I remember massaging lotion into the creases in his legs and I remember him enjoying that. So many things that I had forgotten. Not forgotten in the sense that I was unable to recall them, but in the sense that I had failed to remember. Life is too busy (and short) to sit around reliving the past, but sometimes it is nice to look back. Which makes me so grateful for cameras, pictures (like this one), and for this blog.

Things are different now. Tonight I brought him home after a long day at Grandma and Grandpas and he fell asleep in the car. As I carried him inside his head lay on my shoulder and his hanging feet hit just above my knee as I walked. He can talk now sometimes saying two words together. He has just grown so much. How quickly things change with babies. It is such a whirlwind of no sleep, growth, and change. All of those things are hard (for me at least) but oh-so worth it.