Time in a Bottle

Time passes far too quickly. In just under a month and a half, Ben will be turning 2 years old. I sent out the first batch of electronic invitations to his party earlier today with the email addresses that I had on hand. It's going to be a rocking good time.. we're going the evite route this year to be conservative. It's also because we suck at sending mass mailings in the real mail.

Anyway.. it's hard not to do some reminiscing.. Thanksgiving of 2006 was right around when my pregnancy started to tank. Looking forward into the holiday season, it's hard not to replay the story of Ben's arrival and his first few days over and over in my head. How "perfect" is it that he was discharged from the NICU on Christmas Morning? He's not old enough to hate that story yet.. but trust me.. by the time he's 8 or 9, he'll be like "mo-OHM.. stop telling that story... *whine*"

When Benjamin was exactly 1 year old, we had his handprints and footprints taken at Salt March Pottery in Dartmouth, Massachusetts. It's a bit of a haul from the Boston area, but they also have appointments in a number of the ISIS Maternity stores. We opted to drive down to the actual shop in Dartmouth because we wanted to get his prints done on his actual birthday (yes.. i'm OCD).



I can't say enough about the absolutely INCREDIBLE craftmanship, customer service and the overall WOW factor that we walked away from this experience with. We had a little brute of a 1 year old who WOULD NOT help out in ANY WAY.. if you want to get him to open his hand.. that little fist would clamp shut like a vise and whenever you touched his legs he'd start kicking fiercely. I didn't think there was any chance that we'd be able to get good prints.

When we arrived at the store for our appointment, they had two slabs of clay already prepared for us. The artist (and I'm irritated that I can't remember her name.. she was great!) was completely at ease with working with our ACTIVE baby to the point where she made it look easy. He watched intently as she pressed his little fingers and toes into the clay. Incredible. After the prints were cast, we then selected some stamps and the color scheme for two pallets and headed on our way. The crew at Salt Marsh went on to paint and fire the pieces and they shipped them to our home a few weeks later.

We haven't really done anything with these prints. They have sat safely in their boxes. We had thoughts of hanging them up or presenting them somehow.. but it just never seems to happen.

A few days ago, Benjamin had been home sick and was going a little stir crazy by early evening. For some reason, the subject of the pottery came up. I went and pulled out one of the prints and brought it out for Ben to check out. I could NOT believe how big his little hands and feet looked next to the prints from just last year.