On November 13th 1981, at 4:10 p.m., after 8.7 months of taking prenatal vitamins, and drinking only water and fresh milk, and eating only the healthiest foods (and many, many Taco Bell Tostadas);

and after 6.5 months of lying on her side for 15 minutes every two hours because of this and after a sleepless night of contractions,

this girl had her first baby.

And she fell most deeply in love. She stared at that baby boy well into the night, and when the nurses wanted to take him away for tests, she followed them to make sure he wasn’t switched, or dropped, or lost.

She wanted to name him Brian or Kevin, because those were her most favorite boy names. But the baby’s father thought those names were too wimpy. His suggestions were Perry, or Louis, or Thomas or Robert, historic family names. She named him Bobby, not Robert, and not after her dad like everyone thought, but secretly after her 6th grade teacher, who was more like a dad to her anyway… and after Bobby Sherman.

Now, on November 13th 2008, at 4:10 a.m., after searching through boxes in the basement for two hours, that girl, 27 years later, can’t find her first baby’s baby book. She found two other baby books, and several dozen photo albums, and boxes and boxes of pictures not in albums.

She found this

and this

and this.

And then she looked at the clock and saw that it was 6:30 a.m., and realized she had a very long day ahead of her, and that Bobby-fest would have to become a two-part blog post.