Yesterday, Mom came over and suggested we go to Anna's apartment to swim in the indoor pool. Since the kids were booooooored, we went. We had a wonderful time. Mom took Tommy to the car while the rest of us went up to change. On our way out, I kept counting kids and feeling freaked out. I said, "I feel naked without Tommy!" and Anna immediately responded, "You LOOK naked without Tommy!".
I do keep asking "Where's Niklaus? Where's Mari?" when we are out and about to keep the older kids alerted to where their little sibs are and to always look for them. If Mari and Bocker are lagging behind or hiding behind some bigger kid's legs, I get that momentary panic and the big kids roll their eyes and say, "He/she is RIGHT HERE!" before I even ask, they are so used to it. But, there's nothing like that "empty arms" feeling of having someone else hold Tommy while I deal with the older kids. It's so odd that someone who's only been in the outside world for four months can seem like he's been here forever...so much so that when he's out of sight for more than a few minutes, he feels missed.
I feel naked also because my camera finally pooped out completely. Who would have expected that? I take such good care of that thing. It had duct tape on the broken battery case, a cracked casing and askew viewfinder (that couldn't be looked through), it's been in a rainstorm, thrown in the dryer, dropped about 20 times (once down the stairs). It's only about 4 years old! Heehee, I BEAT on that thing and it still kept taking cool pictures. It was a Kodak EasyShare c330 and I LOVED it for how easy it was to use and how it took surprisingly good pictures for how cheapo it was. It only had 4 megapixels (whateverthosethingsare) and it only costs around 100 bucks but I wish I had another exactly like it. I don't have any money to buy a new one but I did find a refurbished one similar to it on the Kodak website that I might buy (there are SO many other things to pay for, it's so hard to justify purchases like that). Here is the very last video taken with my now defunct camera:
Proof of Tooth (Starring Tommy)
