One bit of advice I wish I had followed when my children were young was to take more pictures. It was always such a pain keeping pictures organized in those days, but today, with all the digital technology available, one no longer has any excuse not to take pictures of everything your child does.
And I do mean everything. Yes, I did get all the sappy shots, getting on the school bus the first day of kindergarten with the adorable little plaid dress, family vacations, holidays, birthday parties, graduations . . . well some of them, at least.
What I would advise most of all is to get pictures of each child with each friend. Take one every year at each birthday party. Send a copy of the birthday party picture along with each thank you note. Likewise, you should get a picture of your baby in each new baby outfit that came as a gift from a friend or relative and send that along with the thank you note, because no giver of an adorable little baby dress will be able to resist seeing how adorable the recipient looks in the gift she bought. Ideally, the relative should appear in the picture, holding the baby. When your child is a senior in high school, he or she may need a baby picture to put in the high school yearbook. Be sure you have a respectable selection of pictures from which to choose (and not just the one of your child in the bathtub!) so your teen won’t be able to accuse you of never having cared about him or her, and there you .
What I would advise most of all is to get pictures of each child with each friend. Take one every year at each birthday party. Send a copy of the birthday party picture along with each thank you note. Likewise, you should get a picture of your baby in each new baby outfit that came as a gift from a friend or relative and send that along with the thank you note, because no giver of an adorable little baby dress will be able to resist seeing how adorable the recipient looks in the gift she bought. Ideally, the relative should appear in the picture, holding the baby. When your child is a senior in high school, he or she may need a baby picture to put in the high school yearbook. Be sure you have a respectable selection of pictures from which to choose (and not just the one of your child in the bathtub!) so your teen won’t be able to accuse you of never having cared about him or her, and there you .
Then save as many pictures as you can of each friend and relation, and when your child has a bar mitzvah or a Quinceañera or graduation party or a wedding reception, or when he or she retires, you can trot out all these pictures again and make a slide show or video to show as entertainment. All your guests will love seeing pictures of themselves and each other from ten or twenty or fifty years earlier, and you’ll have a better party, with people being able to laugh at how geeky they looked in second grade or what funny hairstyles people wore twenty years ago, or how young Aunt Jennifer used to look back in those days.
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