Time Marches On...

I know I've explained this before but, once upon a time, when I was in high school, I saw an episode of Oprah where a woman had photographed her kids wearing the same article of clothing every year of their lives. Her daughter wore one of her sundresses and her son wore his dad's dress shirt. Of course, as little people they were dwarfed by the large garment. But, as they grew, the pieces of clothing began to fit. She had the pictures framed in her hallway. I decided right then and there that I was going to do that very same thing when I had kids.

When Garrett was born, we chose his daddy's football jersey for a couple of reasons. The first was that it has our last name on the back and we thought that would be cool. While I'd probably never choose to frame a shot of the back of our son on his birthday, we've got some cute ones over the years. The second reason was that the thing was huge so, even if our son grows up to tower over his father (please, please, please!), he isn't likely to outgrow the jersey. The third reason is that my husband doesn't wear it very often so, hopefully, it won't be destroyed until after our kid is good and grown.

Now that we've got nine pictures accumulated, I've thought about getting a collage frame and finally, for the first time, displaying the shots. Tonight I put them all in one place so that I can get them printed. (I'll probably wait a year or two longer with Matthew but who knows, maybe I'll love the frame so much that I'll want to get going on putting Matthew's up as well...)

But with Garrett, we took the first picture when he was just a couple of days old. It is the only picture we have that wasn't taken on his actual birthday because of all the laboring and all the pushing and all the sweating. And, really, all the not taking the jersey to the hospital.

(Ramona, CA)

And then, before we knew it, that kid was celebrating his first birthday and it was almost impossible to keep him on the jersey for more than a second or two at a time.

(Ramona, CA)

He turned two and we tried putting him in the enormous garment but, if he stood up, he nearly went right through the neck hole. So he had to stay sitting.

(Riverton, UT)

He turned three and looked slightly less like a chubby Easter ham.

(West Jordan, UT)

Then, at four, he apparently became an angel and glowed with a magical shiny halo. Seriously. They all have halos. (The pictures, not four-year-olds).

(Sand Harbor, Lake Tahoe, NV)

Five happened...

(West Jordan, UT)

Then six...

(West Jordan, UT)

And then this inexplicable thing happened where he started to change in huge ways over the course of a mere 365 days. He went from being a little boy to being, well, a seven-year-old boy that really wasn't so little.

(West Jordan, UT)

And he lost his baby teeth which made him go from a boy to a college student. Or, something a little less dramatic but not, actually, a lot less dramatic.

 

(Whittier, CA)

So there it is. Eight years represented in nine pictures. Same jersey. Same kid. Different size. Kid, that is.