Babies don't keep

Mother, O' Mother, come shake out your cloth,

Empty the dustpan, poison the moth.

Hang out the washing, make up the bed,

Sew on a button and butter the bread.

Where is the mother whose house is so shocking?

She's up in the nursery, blissfully rocking.

Oh, I've grown as shiftless as Little Boy Blue,

Lullaby, rockaby, lullaby loo.

Dishes are waiting and bills are past due,

Pat-a-cake, darling, and peek - peekaboo.

The shopping's not done and there's nothing for stew,

And out in the yard there's a hullabaloo.

But I'm playing Kanga and this is my Roo.

Look! Aren't his eyes the most wonderful hue?

Lullaby, rockaby, lullaby loo.

The cleaning and scrubbing can wait till tomorrow,

But children grow up, as I've learned to my sorrow.

So quiet down cobwebs; Dust go to sleep!

I'm rocking my baby and babies don't keep.

~ Ruth Hulbert Hamilton

Alan's mom has the last paragraph of this poem hanging on her wall.  I think of it often when I am rocking and cuddling my sweet little baby when I maybe should be doing something else...like laundry or dishes or just picking up.  Then I remember, all these things will still be here but this little baby will only be little for a very short time.  He has already grown so much in the three short weeks he has been here.  Babies really don't keep. Someday he won't want to be rocked, but for now he does and I am more than happy to oblige.  So is the rest of my family.  The past couple of weeks there has been a lot of this going on:

This is his favorite way to sleep. I don't mind it much either.

Alan claims I am a baby hog.  He comes home and steals the baby from me to cuddle him.

Sawyer sure loves Canyon. 

I'm not sure what I am going to do when Sadie goes back to school and I lose her "Magic Touch" here at home during the day. When I really do need to get something done and Canyon is a little fussy (he isn't really very fussy, but sometimes he just wants me to hold him...I may have created a monster, but I don't really care at this point.)  I can hand him to her and she puts him right to sleep.  She is just calm and quietly calms him down too.

And of course, I have to share just a couple of the hundreds of pictures we have taken of the little guy.  He really is just a sweetie and we love having him here.

I like this picture because it shows how much hair he has. 

This picture I added because he really is our little gift from God.  We have waited and waited for him to come to our home.  He arrived as perfectly as possible and is a perfect little baby as well.