melting

Today DH started the long process of copying all of our home video from analog to digital. This, of course, requires actually playing each tape so the signal can be captured. Consequently, I spent a good part of the day ooh-ing and ah-ing over my children's baby days.

The last tape we transferred started out with DS1's trip home from the hospital, one day old, and since it was a 90-minute tape, catologed the next 4 months of his life. It astonished me, literally, to see how easily his tiny head fit in my hand... he seems impossible small. Now, he's about 66 lbs and more than 4 feet tall. How did that happen?

In all that very early video of him, we have quite a bit of footage of him sleeping or just waking up. The coolest thing was to recognize the same somewhat dazed expression on his tiny face that we see every school morning as he struggles to consciousness... even when he was so tiny he was a real person already, no question. Personality, mannerisms, everything -- he had it from the get-go, and some things (like hiccups) were traits even before he was born.

The other cool (and funny) thing was how each one of the kids kept mistaking DS1 for DS2. There was footage of DS1 hovering near DD when she was only a few days old, and DS2 said, "[DS2] stay away from the baby!" We laughed and told him that was his older brother, he should've said, "[DS1] stay away from [DD]!"

Where am I? How come I'm not in these movies? DS2 was wondering, even though he didn't ask that exact question. You can see the little wheels turning, I swear. We told him that he was still up in heaven with God. DS2 struggles with being the youngest, but I tell him that God kept him up in heaven until we were ready for him, and until God was ready to let him come down. Sometimes I'm not so sure about how ready (or capable) I was/am, but I have to just trust that one to God.

Between yesterday and today, I've been tearing up unbelievably. It seems everything happy/sad/nostalgic is enough to make me cry. I'm sure it's a sleep deficiency thing, and possibly hormonal. Or maybe it's because there have been a lot of new stressors lately? Whatever the reason, I look forward to it quitting. I'm tired of having to pull myself together when I could just as easily melt into a puddle of tears. The children don't deal well with that at all, and I try very hard not to subject them to it.

Despite my good intentions I got next to nothing done this weekend, with the exception of laundry. I watched a lot of animated Spider-Man episodes with the kids, though. We're TiVOing them from both Toon Disney and ABC Family, so we're getting 2 different continuing storylines simultaneously. It doesn't seem to bother the kids at all, they have no trouble keeping track. This is the recent series, not the old original animated series, and it's pretty good. The exposition is a little (ok, a lot) clunky, but we have to consider the target demographic. I think it's cool how the series is integrating other Marvel characters like DareDevil and the old Captain America crowd. It's actually pretty interesting.

(Can't believe I just wrote that much about Spider-Man...)

Well, tomorrow's a school day and I best toddle off if I'm not to be a complete basket case.