I am a mother on a mission.
Before my son was born, I bought his baby book with the dream of completing it. I imagine him sitting down at a kitchen table sometime in the 2040s with his lovely wife. I can hear her cooing over how cute my son was as a baby and laughing over the special moments I have shared with him in his infancy.
I even took a week's vacation to take the time to update this book (amongst other household chores that needed tending). I dutifully downloaded, categorized and archived all the images and video from two cellphones, a camera and a video camera. I visited the local pharmacy and made digital prints.
I sorted, cut, pasted and documented and still there was more. There's all the moments the book expects me to recall — as if, after nine months of raising a baby I remember the day and hour that his first tooth popped through. Frankly, I was just relieved that we had confirmation that he would, in fact, have teeth.
Then there's the litany of medical records I'm expected to hand-write and record … on one page. My son had more than a dozen ear infections between 7 months and 15 months. There isn't enough ink in my pen and enough muscle strength in my hand to record every time he visited the doctor's office.
And yet, I am not giving up.
There's the strange dimensions of photographs the book calls for — seriously, no photo place prints 2-inch by 2-inch squares — that have made the photo aspect of this journey difficult. Unless someone has an old Polaroid I can borrow, I am forced to blow up, shrink down or cut up other perfectly usable images.
Not that I had all the images I needed anyway. When I went to find the pictures from my son's first birthday party on my camera, I was horrified that they weren't there. It turns out I was using our video camera that day and was planning on getting still pictures from everyone else — then never followed up with anyone.
I didn't have pictures from my baby shower or from the hospital the day my son was born. I mean, think about it: I was the one opening the presents and giving birth. I couldn't possibly be chronicling it all at the same time!
I'm beginning to realize why mothers eventually give up on baby books. They're nice to have, but the fact of the matter is that life happens in the meantime. There are feedings to give, naps to regulate, work and cleaning to be done, activities to organize, diaper changes and baths to give, visits with family and friends to keep up.
And at the end of the day, all those things build a bond with my family that is more important than any snippet I file away in a book.
I'm still going to give it the old college try, to give my son and his future family a snapshot into our lives in 2012-13. But it's turning into Mission: Impossible.
— Sarah Leach is content editor at The Holland Sentinel. Contact her at (616) 546-4278 or sarah.leach@hollandsentinel.com.
Before my son was born, I bought his baby book with the dream of completing it. I imagine him sitting down at a kitchen table sometime in the 2040s with his lovely wife. I can hear her cooing over how cute my son was as a baby and laughing over the special moments I have shared with him in his infancy.
I even took a week's vacation to take the time to update this book (amongst other household chores that needed tending). I dutifully downloaded, categorized and archived all the images and video from two cellphones, a camera and a video camera. I visited the local pharmacy and made digital prints.
I sorted, cut, pasted and documented and still there was more. There's all the moments the book expects me to recall — as if, after nine months of raising a baby I remember the day and hour that his first tooth popped through. Frankly, I was just relieved that we had confirmation that he would, in fact, have teeth.
Then there's the litany of medical records I'm expected to hand-write and record … on one page. My son had more than a dozen ear infections between 7 months and 15 months. There isn't enough ink in my pen and enough muscle strength in my hand to record every time he visited the doctor's office.
And yet, I am not giving up.
There's the strange dimensions of photographs the book calls for — seriously, no photo place prints 2-inch by 2-inch squares — that have made the photo aspect of this journey difficult. Unless someone has an old Polaroid I can borrow, I am forced to blow up, shrink down or cut up other perfectly usable images.
Not that I had all the images I needed anyway. When I went to find the pictures from my son's first birthday party on my camera, I was horrified that they weren't there. It turns out I was using our video camera that day and was planning on getting still pictures from everyone else — then never followed up with anyone.
I didn't have pictures from my baby shower or from the hospital the day my son was born. I mean, think about it: I was the one opening the presents and giving birth. I couldn't possibly be chronicling it all at the same time!
I'm beginning to realize why mothers eventually give up on baby books. They're nice to have, but the fact of the matter is that life happens in the meantime. There are feedings to give, naps to regulate, work and cleaning to be done, activities to organize, diaper changes and baths to give, visits with family and friends to keep up.
And at the end of the day, all those things build a bond with my family that is more important than any snippet I file away in a book.
I'm still going to give it the old college try, to give my son and his future family a snapshot into our lives in 2012-13. But it's turning into Mission: Impossible.
— Sarah Leach is content editor at The Holland Sentinel. Contact her at (616) 546-4278 or sarah.leach@hollandsentinel.com.
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