You Can't Always "Undo"

Every once in a while you get a reminder from life at what an idiot you can be. It's a lesson on how, even though you have a lot of things figured out in life and have been successful in many areas, you're not perfect and occasionally screw up big. Well, today is one of those days.

With Sam gone, I have been spending several evenings putting together a video DVD of Morgan's first year of life. It has photos and videos and music, and I was planning on sharing it at her upcoming birthday party. It would be a keepsake for us and her to have and look back on. I was just about finished with it and was pretty pleased with how it turned out. I just had a few more things to add, but was running into some computer troubles. My hard drive was getting a little full with all the photos and videos, so I couldn't add the last few videos I wanted to my project. Well, here's where the idiot part of my brain took over. I deleted files from my computer to try and free up space. I happened to delete videos, which take up a lot of memory, because I thought they were duplicates (some in iPhoto and some in iMovie). Well, I got a little surprise when suddenly parts of Morgan's movie were blank. Hmmm...that is weird. It wasn't until this morning when I sat back down to "fix" it that I realized what had happened and that those videos were gone for good. (Yes, I emptied the trash.)

NOOOOOO!!!! A time machine would be pretty handy right now, I was thinking, so I could go back and undo what I did! Fortunately, the videos that were deleted were just from this summer, and not her whole life. But there were irreplaceable: Morgan's first time playing in the sand, saying "Dad," crawling around, Father's Day with Sam, playing in the pool..... if I think about it more, I might throw up. I am so pissed at myself for such a simple lapse of judgment - actually more like technological ignorance. There is a slim chance I can recover the files with some expensive software, but I just have to live with the consequences and put things back in perspective. So as I have been talking myself down from this anxiety and anguish (where is Sam at a time like this!?), I have realized: Morgan is happy, healthy and that is all that really matters; it was only 3 months of her life that are gone and we still have all the photos; I'm not a horrible mom for accidentally deleting those videos; I need to accept that I screw up sometimes. Besides, Morgan is going to keep on growing and changing and we will have so many more cute and funny moments to capture in the years to come (backed up on an external hard drive, of course!)









Here's Morgan getting tickled by Grandpa Fred.
Top photo: Morgan and I video chat with Sam in China.