Nostalgia and anticipation

We just received two boxes of Dutch's old baby clothes, which have been worn by other babies and lived in other people's garages over the last three years. Cook and I got all nostalgic while looking through them, in a sort of cynically sentimental way - "Oh look! Remember these pants? Remember how Dutch absolutely filled them with poop that time? I wonder how Jenny got the stains out!?" - and Dutch entertained herself by laying out outfits for her sibling for different seasons. She is annoyed that we have no skirts or shorts for her infant sibling, and was horrified to learn that she had no skirts or shorts until her legs got long enough for me to see any point in it (18 months, maybe?). I suggested that it might be okay for babies to wear just a shirt and diaper (or not) when it gets hot, and she looked at me with the look of disgust that she reserves just for my (frequent) expressions of fashion ignorance. So I told her she could be in charge of picking out outfits for her sibling until the sibling starts picking his/her own outfits, and she could purchase shorts for Anaximander from her own savings.* That mollified her, and she went back to laying outfits out on the floor.

Cook and I spent some time after our clothing-related sentimental outburst reminiscing about Dutch's infancy. These are my favorite memories from Dutch's very early infancy:

1. The way she screamed after they suctioned her. She was SO pissed off.
   
2. Holding her for the first time, of course. The first thing she did was to poop on me, which she now thinks is a hilarious story.
   
3. My first two separations from her, which are also stories about Cook. We resisted most of the staff's efforts to take her away, but they stole her away in the middle of the one night we stayed there, for some random let's-do-it-while-we've-got-them-in-the-hospital sort of test. Cook went with her, and that made me feel so safe, as we had now officially become a family of three, and he would look out for her when I could not, and vice versa. And when we left the next morning, I got a ride home from Jenny-the-stain-removal-queen, and Cook walked home with Dutch in the sling, the first time he'd really gotten to take full, solitary responsibility for her. I was so happy to see them when they walked in the door, the two of them. (Dutch was asleep, and not actually walking, but still.)

Those early minor events now are tied in my memory to my understanding of her personality and our family relationships. I remember the look on Cook's face as he arrived with that tiny sling bag in the context of his fathering ever since.

Even the fact that she was born on her due date, in a hurry, ties in my mind to her personality (while she is not reckless, she is endlessly determined), which is silly. That's the weird thing about reminiscing about a baby who is no longer a baby. I remember being kind of irritated during Dutch's infancy by people telling me that I should cherish this time, because I felt that they were all speaking from the perspective of having a baby who had grown up. They were all looking back just like I am now, remembering while knowing how it all turned out. Whereas I was experiencing the infancy raw, without context or the confidence of knowing Dutch and I would both survive to be healthy and reasonably well adjusted. (So far.) And now I get to do it all over again! I'm joyfully anticipating the pleasure of slowly getting to know this new person, but I know it'll also be just as daunting as getting to know Dutch was. Also, I'm sure s/he will poop extravagantly on those pants.

* Which are accumulating - she's saving up for this. Or maybe this. Or something else. It depends on when you ask her. But she's definitely planning on expanding her Playmobil empire. Or launching a line of baby clothes, or something.