Overpriced baby shampoo

There are lots of smells that come with having children. When they are babies it is usually the smells of spit-up, formula, baby powder, poopy diapers, diaper rash creme, and that coveted smell of a fresh clean baby. For my babies it was a certain kind of baby soap that I searched the world over for and once I found it I bought out every bottle they had and then had them order me another case... it was overpriced but it was a smell that I had gotten used to as "my clean babies smell" and so I paid for the overpriced stuff and savored every moment of that "clean smell".

Then they get a little older and they start to smell like strained carrots, prunes, and whatever else they manage to pick up as they are crawling across the floor. I still washed them with the overpriced baby soap and savored every moment of that smell.

Now that they are even older they both have their own smells. Reagan comes home from school smelling all kinds of wonderful (insert sarcastic face here), morning breath, hair gel (for when she will let me actually pull her hair up) body splash (yes my 3 year old likes putting on perfume, although it isnt a regular occurance), sweaty little girl, grown up hair shampoo (because she has so much hair) etc. Brody smells like a littel boy (that should say enough =), his shirts usually smell like whatever his lunch was for the day, poopy diapers, sweaty little boy (and yes that is different than sweaty little girl smell), dirt, paint, etc.

I dont use that baby soap anymore... now we buy whatever is on sale, but sure enough, as I snuggle up close to them at night before bed, and find that certain spot, I breathe in... a long slow breath, I find that smell. Not the smell of the overpriced baby shampoo or that afternoons lunch, or sweaty kid smell, but "their smell". The smell that they have always had since the day they were born, that intoxicating smell that is them. It always has been and always will be their smell. I could hold them forever, breathing that smell, taking it all in, holding on to who they are by that one little smell. They will probably never know I do it, and when they are older if I tell them that I did it, I am sure they will think I am weird, but for now... "that smell" is worth so much more that all the money spent on overpriced baby soap.