Second star on the right and straight on 'til morning

When you are pregnant with your first child, you carefully save little mementos for your baby-to-be.  The first sonogram pictures.  Maybe the cards people sent at your baby shower.  The baby arrives and you continue collecting treasures: baby’s first hospital picture.  The footprints and handprints.  You think about how cute all of these items will look in the baby book you have already purchased and can’t wait to start.

Then you take baby home.  If you are like me, all of the carefully accrued mementos stay neatly filed, waiting for you to get a spare moment between all the feedings, diaper changes, laundry and naps.  Suddenly, three years have gone by and your baby isn’t a baby anymore. 

The baby book is still empty, which is fine because now you have two kids.  And since you are no longer a new parent, you’ve got it all figured out, and you’ll have plenty of time to relax and work on baby books.  Except, it turns out that as a parent, you never have it all figured out.  The chaos that comes with a family of three is nothing compared to the chaos of a family of four.  And for us, all the beautiful/intense/exhausting/delightful chaos started right here on Happyland Road.

I kid you not.  We live on Happyland Road.  It’s just past Gumdrop Valley.  Take a left by the Peppermint Forest, second star on your right and straight on ‘til morning.  Okay, I may be exaggerating a tad.

Anyway, in an attempt to preserve some of the moments I’d swear I’d never forget, I am starting an online baby book in the form of this blog.  Maybe not so much a baby book, but a family book.  Or life book.  Because parenting is the ride of a lifetime, and in twenty years I hope to look back and remember it all with a smile and a laugh.  Hopefully a ‘haha, that was funny’ kind of laugh.  Not a maniacal-one-step-away from crazy kind of laugh.  But only time will tell.