I met some of my best friends at a prenatal exercise class. We were from all walks of life, but we were all going through the same exhilarating and terrifying experience of gestating a human being. Our ranks diminished one by one as our tiny humans made their way into the world. New mothers would disappear for awhile into an all-consuming regime of sleepless nights, the management of endless bodily excretions, and trying to keep a wriggling, mewling creature alive.
Once we managed to fumble our way through those early days, we found each other again. We would get together at each other’s houses, which had all been redecorated in a similar aesthetic featuring bulky plastic baby paraphernalia that sprouted overnight in all of our living rooms like giant, colorful mushrooms after a rain. We called our get togethers “playdates,” but they were not so much for the babies as they were for the mothers.
Every playdate would begin or end with a photo session. We’d line up our babies on a couch like so many sacks of flour and snap merrily away, trying to record the sweet memory for posterity before they toppled over.
Seventeen years passed like a dream. Recently, I got together again with a couple of those friends and our babies for another photo shoot. This time it was for senior pictures! Our babies are in their last year of high school now and are applying to colleges.
We are lucky to live just down the road from this baby. She grew up to be a delightful combination of sweet and sassy. Whenever we go away, we entrust our entire menagerie to her capable care.
I visited these twins just days after they were born. They were impossibly tiny and their little legs were still scrunched up tight…They’ve grown into handsome young men who are a credit to their parents.
We managed to snap a few photos of this baby before he had to leave to get to his piano lesson…
…thereby missing Couch Babies Photo Shoot 2.0:
I may have to cheat a little nowadays to be at the same altitude as this boy…
…but he’ll always be my baby.
