Future nostalgia

Our 3 year anniversary is Tuesday (9/20), Kyle took me out to Cygnus last night for dinner to celebrate :) When I think about our wedding in Jamaica just 3 years ago, and that now, for this anniversary, we have a small child and another on the way, I get a sense of future nostalgia. Is that even a thing? I think about how these are the days in our relationship, and in our family, that we'll look back on when we celebrate our 35th anniversary.

The same thing happens when I put our pictures in photo albums. These albums that I'm buying, brand new, right now and filling with pictures from recent events, are going to be the albums the kids pull out years from now when they want to look at their baby pictures. The albums and pictures will become faded and old-looking, probably somewhat tattered from use. They won't probably ever remember these albums as brand new, one of my major accomplishments of this year and years to come. To them, these books (along with so many other things I'll do for them as their mother) will just be something that is there, not a project of love, but just another part of their family life.

And the "me" who put them together will be a memory, a person my kids don't fully know because to them I'll always be 'Mom', they aren't going to really understand the part of me who is 'Sarah' who is still learning right now what it means to be 'Mom', and who will probably still be learning then. They'll try to imagine Mom and Dad as young people with all their friends having the time of their lives in Jamaica for their wedding, but the people they see in those pictures will most likely seem like strangers to them, not possibly the same people they know today as their parents.

Many times, when I'm taking pictures of Kaleb I'm thinking of how these are his baby pictures. The fun shots I take of him on our vacation to Sleeping Bear Dunes will be accessories to the stories I tell him in years to come about the time it was only him, no siblings, and we all went on an adventure together. I already think about how I will be visibly pregnant in all the pictures of his 2nd birthday party this year. And how I will show those pictures to this baby and we'll talk about how this baby was here with us for that party.

I wonder if other people think like this or if it is just me and my romanticized imagination.