Friday 23 January 2015

Yesterday...

Yesterday I had a quiet day. Thursdays for me mean Ava at Nursery, and Heidi out with my Mum. They are my "space" day, my "catch up" day, my "odd jobs" day. But yesterday I had a change of plans at the last minute and found myself at a loose end.

That doesn't happen very often.

And so I pulled out my scrapbooks, set up my laptop, grabbed myself a cup of tea and began sorting.


I made a scrapbook for Ava after she was born. It holds all the mementoes of the first year of her life. Little treasures I have stored up - from scan pictures to baby bands, from hospital feeding charts, to her first plane ticket. Mixed in with all the photographs (and you know how many I take) of her first precious year of life.

Our Ava - aged 7 months
And Heidi's scrapbook has been on my to-do list for 18 months now. And its no nearer done than it was the day she was born. Or at least it wasn't. Until yesterday.
 
And then I sat down and waded through this little life. 22 months. 22 months that have packed more life experience into them than probably my 27 years that preceded them. I sorted through photos of our girls sharing their first moments together, I smiled over photos of those blissful early days of Heidi's life where she really was the dream baby, I cried over photos and memories of the uncertainty of those dark days of her illness, and my heart ached to relive it all. I rejoiced at the joy of that summer. That summer when we were slowly restored by our gracious Heavenly Father as we swam fjords and gazed over Norway's beauty.

Little Heidi - aged 4 months
Then last night, we were out with friends, and I heard a tragic story.

And I realised again how very much I have to be grateful for.

I will spend these next few weeks carefully putting together Heidi's scrapbook. One day, it will help her understand that first year of her life, I hope, and all the consequences of it. And I hope, though there will be some hard things for her to come to terms with, she will see the beauty of that year too. And see how much we, as a family, have to be thankful for.

Our little family at Heidi's dedication, we had just been discharged from hospital for the final time.
So I await the arrival of my photographs now... and I'm looking forward to finally recording that year, hard as some parts of it will be, because it has sharpened us, changed us, taught us more about the Saviour, brought us closer together as a little family.

And let's be honest. My little lady needs her scrapbook... and her Mama needs to get on with it; there'll be another one to make all too soon!

8 comments:

  1. Oh what a lovely way to spend a day - and such a great idea too - I'm really bad at remembering to print photos for the girls, one of these days I think I'll print them a copy of the blog as their baby book because that's where almost all their pictures are!

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  2. Ah gorgeous photo at the end there Claire. Such a lovely thing to do but one of those nagging things that seems to always get pushed to the back! Definitely worth doing before baby no. 3 comes! x

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  3. Oh Claire! This made me shed a little tear! What a beautiful family you are, and what a distance you have come. Every time I read one of your posts I want to hug my own three that little bit tighter. You remind me to be so very thankful, and I'm so glad for that. Here's to new scrapbooks to sit alongside the older ones, and many more happy memories to come xxx

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  4. I did a album for Aaron's first year but never managed to finish Adele's as have very few pics of her first weeks due to me being poorly and as for Lauren i never even started it! This has encouraged me to get on and do the other 2 x

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  5. You have inspired me to print out photos from samuel's first year and make a scrapbook - I have kept all the other bits and bobs to go in it anyway - thank you

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  6. Loking forward seeing the scrapbooks!

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  7. Such a beautiful post Claire. I started doing scrapbooks for mads but over the years I started doing more with this blog and now I document our life on there for them. I don't think it's quite the same as having an actual book to read and treasure but I hope they will still love it when they are older. x

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