Ok, my girl is growing up. Clearly, something must be done. In a desperate attempt to stop time in its tracks, I jotted down some memories I want to hold on to forever.
Three favorite memories of Mackenzie’s babyhood:
– Big stretches. Scott has always loved to be the one to get her up from naps, and starting when she was a month old, when we’d walk in the room she would carefully stretch out her arms and her legs before she was ready to be awake. I would hear from the other room Scott saying “Mmmm big stretches” and I knew she was doing this:
– Awww, milk. I blogged about this early on, but my girl and I had a little secret: She kept her 5am breastfeeding until she was almost a year old. And up until that point, every time I fed her in the middle of the night without fail, after she filled up with milk she’d go straight as a board and limp at the same time. She’d throw her head back and sigh quietly and that was it. She was a goner. I’d lay her back in her crib and she’d stay perfectly still and fall right to sleep.
It kind of reminds me of myself when I accidentally fall asleep on the couch and it’s the deepest, most glorious sleep. If I hear Scott in the room I stay perfectly still, with my eyes closed, silently wishing him to not notice me or wake me up.
My mom got a big kick out of it, too:
– She adores these thin little microfleece blankets my mom gave her as swaddling blankets. The corners of them are especially desirable, and when I hand her a blanket before a nap, she carefully rotates it hand-over-hand until she finds a particularly flavorful corner and then shoves it completely in her mouth and falls asleep.
One time, I walked in to get her up from a nap and she still had her blanket shoved in her mouth. She saw me come in, smiled really big around the blanket, and her little hands went searching for another corner. Successful, she proffered the crusty corner like she was presenting me with the best gift in the world. “Here, Mama! Now we can both suck on my grody blanket be in bliss.”
Three favorite memories of her toddlerhood (so far):
– She called me “Wuh-bah” instead of Mama up until about a week ago. Once, when I was upstairs and she was sitting with Scott at the kitchen table, he flipped open his cell phone to call someone. Mackenzie grabbed it and eagerly said into the receiver, “Wuhbah?” She thought I was calling. 🙂
– She does this darling thing where she sits down with her legs straight out in front and she raises and lowers them on the ground, kicking her heels. All the time. She’ll be racing around playing with toys and she’ll suddenly drop to the ground and do some leg kicks, just for fun.
– When I put my arms out for her, she will come racing across the room at top speed and just ram into my chest. She gives “big snugs” with abandon and will linger just in case my heart isn’t already a puddle of melted love.
Three memories of dating Scott:
– He was up for anything. I knew he liked me, and liked me a lot, because I’d suggest the most outlandish things and as long it meant time spent with me… he was game. Case in point: The time he drove me home for Thanksgiving to surprise my family. We had recently become “just friends” but he did it anyway. Or, the night when it was nearly midnight and I suggested we WALK to do my grocery shopping… to a store 3 miles away. “Sure, sounds like fun,” said he. And we did.
– The time he drove through a snowstorm late at night to come see me in California (never do that again, mkay?). I slept on the couch so I could let him in when he arrived, but he ended up pulling into the driveway in the wee hours and falling asleep in his car. My mom returned from fetching the morning paper with a very sheepish, very in love Scott Bean.
– When we were still just dating (not engaged, mind you), my brother got married and so my parents came to Utah for the wedding. My dad ended up walking around Temple Square in Salt Lake in the snow to see the lights with me and Scott. I was off dancing in the snow and my dad asked Scott, “So, what do you like about my daughter?” and Scott stopped and looked him right in the eye and said, “She’s the most amazing woman I’ve ever met.”
I think my dad knew before I did that I was going to marry Scott. 🙂
Three favorite memories of our marriage (thus far):
– I was standing in the kitchen, cooking, and I called out to Scott who was reading on the couch, “You know what I like about us?”
Without skipping a beat, he replied matter-of-factly, “It’s our hair, isn’t it?”
Just like that, I was laughing so hard I cried. He makes me laugh every single day. Sometimes it’s jokes only he and I would ever find funny and that just makes them even better.
– One time we were driving in Provo in a snowstorm and a man behind us starts flashing his lights and waving us off the road. Certain something was wrong with our car, Scott signaled and carefully pulled to the side. He got out of the car, and the man in the other car got out and met him in the swirling snow. Turns out the man grew up in Salem, the same (large) city Scott grew up in. Incidentally, we had a bumper sticker on the car for Scott’s high school and while this man hadn’t attended the high school (and certainly not in the same decade as Scott), he had heard of it… so he waved us off the road for a chat. The conversation ended with him peering into the car and shaking his finger at Scott, “You’d better hold on to that one. She’s a keeper.” Thanks, random Salem dude!
– Europe. Every second of both trips we’ve taken to Europe together has just been magical. I think my favorite part is being somewhere so epic and realizing I’m sharing it with the person I love most in the world. We just turn and look at each other and know we’re both excited out of our minds.
