Something to Treasure

I am one of the lucky ones. I have a picture of my Anna as a baby, even though we adopted her when she was already seven years old. This is the picture that you see. She is 1 1/2 years old. It is small, blurry, tattered, and printed on paper, but this photo is absolutely precious to me. It is the only real glimpse into my daughter's past that I will ever have of her as a baby. To me, it is priceless.

Anna was so excited the day we took her and Sveta from the detsky dom that she accidentally put her Russian undershirt, underwear, and this hand sewn purse in her bag along with her jacket. Had I known, I honestly would have taken them out and given them back, afraid that the director would think that we had tried to steal something. After all, they told us to leave everything the girls had on that belonged to the detsky dom. Once we were in our hotel and I had the chance to find them, I was very happy to have them in addition to Anna's baby picture. How much more could I have asked for? I had one of my Russian daughter's personal undergarments, and her favorite purse that I could give back to her so that she could show her daughter someday.

Anna doesn't even know how much she will value these things when she is a grown woman.

As for the baby picture.......I am working on getting it blown up into at least a 5X7 so that I could hang it up on our wall for Christmas.

As for my other daughters.....I do not have any of their baby things. No pictures, no rattles, no underwear, nothing. For this I am sad.......... they all wish they had something too. Rachel does have a picture of her mother that she sent to Rachel right before she passed away, but this is all. I am grateful that Rachel has this picture.

It's funny how when I had my first son, I would beat myself up for not taking him to Sears or Wal-mart for his next photo session. You know the ones where it is suggested that we take our kids in at 3, 6, 9, 12 months and so on. Or when I did take him in, I would get angry because he would not smile and I couldn't get that perfect shot I had been dreaming of. I would literally plan our whole day's schedule around getting his picture taken, and I felt justified in being a grumpy, irritable mom. After all...getting your kids picture taken is hard work. "What are you looking at?"

With each child I took them in less and less until I finally stopped taking them in at all. Instead, I took plenty of pictures of them at home. Awww, what a new concept. But, regardless of how many times I took or didn't take their picture, the point is...... I have baby pictures for all of my biological children. In fact, I have hundreds.

I can't go back and change how things are now, I just know that as a mom, I can now teach and offer bits of wisdom to my own children as they grow up.

The first thing I am going to tell them............

1. Don't stress about getting pictures taken. At least you'll have them, but you can never get back that day that you were mean and cranky with your children. It's just not worth it.