Through The Years

Years ago I was watching an episode of Oprah dedicated to unique ways of making memories. The show featured a woman who photographed her children on their birthdays. She had started with her daughter. Every year she took a picture of her daughter wearing one of her own dresses. Of course, when the daughter was quite small the dress looked more like a giant frock or muumuu but, as she grew, it began to fit. It was such a unique idea to see a child's growth through an article of clothing. When her son was born she began photographing him in one of his father's old dress shirts. At first he was just a little tyke swimming in his daddy's shirt but, as he grew, the shirt seemed to shrink. The woman had the pictures lining her hallway as a testimony to the years gone by. I adored the idea but was still years away from having my own children to use as the subjects of this borrowed idea.

At some point I told Troy about the episode and he also loved the idea. I decided that, instead of waiting until Garrett's first birthday, I would take the first picture when he was just a few days old. Two years ago today I snapped the first shot of my little guy. Troy wanted to use his Seahawks jersey because it has our last name on the back and it's really big. So even if Garrett grows to be bigger than his pygmy father, it will still fit. You can see part of the name in one of the shots so it is evident that our last name is not actually Doozleberry. I've been lying to you all. It's actually Badoozleberry but we drop the first syllable out of convenience. Here is my tiny little man two years ago:

One year ago:
And a few days ago:
He was so easy to photograph during those first few days. Unless you tried to move his arms, that is. Those little arms were always thrown up over his head. If you moved them they just popped right back up. We also didn't realize for another couple of weeks that his head always fell to the right. Apparently it was bent in the womb and the tendons were too tight. We had to do little baby exercises to get him to look the other way. I know that he is mine and I held him and nursed him and bathed him but I cannot wrap my mind around the fact that he used to be that small.

He was an extremely happy one year old. If you held a camera up and made any kind of a funny noise the kid giggled and flashed a huge smile. We took about ten pictures of him with the jersey last year and he's grinning in all of them. Except when he's crawling away. He did that a lot.

This year he was not impressed. He's still a very happy kid and our house is filled with squeals and giggles for most of his waking hours. On occasion, however, it is filled with crying and toddler choruses of, "No. No." Two days ago, when I took the pictures, Garrett was demanding his blanket and his pacifier. I was not granting him Paci permission and had taken the Blankie away in order to take a picture where he did not look like Linus Van Pelt. So not joking. It's blue, even. He is usually very good with statements such as, "If you eat a bite of zucchini you can have another bite of jello." Side note: He actually likes zucchini which is great since the garden is producing them in mass. However, he was having none of, "If you smile in this picture I will give you your Blankie back." When I finally did get him to take some without sobbing, he made the cheesiest ham face. The final posted product was one in which he was trying desperately to maintain his pout face while not smiling at his dork mother behind the camera.

But oh what a difference two years makes. 24 months ago his goal in life was to soil his diaper moments after I'd put a fresh one on and keep me awake in between feedings with his constant, peculiar and disconcerting grunt. A year ago his goal in life was to learn how get from that crab crawl to an actual upright and walking position--a feat he mastered two weeks later. Now it seems that his goal in life is to take the world by storm. Just yesterday I found him climbing the outside of the staircase. Luckily he was only three steps up when I discovered him. I shudder to think about what I would have done if I'd found him hanging from the second floor landing which, I'm sure, was his ultimate destination.

I like this picture series. I enjoy watching him growing, ever so slowly, into his father's jersey. As long as, in the end, he's still a Charger fan.