When I was born my dad had a darkroom in the basement, a setup for his SLR that let him take hundreds of photos of me, blowing them up to 11x17, changing the exposures from crazy light to way dark. Most of these experiments survived, and I remember being in high school, digging through two good-sized boxes of photos of mostly myself, lamenting the fact that he'd gotten rid of most of his camera supplies. There was another, smaller box of photos of my sister, who is three years younger. And my brother, born seven years after me? His pix could probably fit in a shoebox.
You know how this story is going to go, without even considering the onset of digital photography. But the topic for me is baby books: You get a baby book for your first and do a pretty good job of filling most of the pages until age one, then it tapers off. You get another baby book for baby #2, and do a mostly pathetic job of getting even the basic information in the pages. For baby #3... all bets are off, you might not even buy a baby book.
I'm trying to make sure I get at least the basics for #3 done within the first few months of his/her life. For my first two, I bought "Oh Baby! A Journal" (
http://www.amazon.com/Oh-Baby-Helene-Tragos-Stelian/dp/B000EZ8ERM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1202235844&sr=8-1), which is actually a very easy book to use; I just never bothered with the repetitive information such as family tree, etc., for my second child. Maybe I'll do that once he's in kindergarten.
The other day, I bought "The First 1000 Days: A Baby Journal," by Nikki McClure
(http://www.amazon.com/First-1000-Days-Baby-Journal/dp/157061508X/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1202235860&sr=8-1). I've seen her artwork before and find it charming, warm, emotive. Instead of lots of lines and forms to fill in, it has mostly blank pages for each month, other pages with things such as "first boat ride, first city, first swim." McClure's artwork is sprinkled throughout. My thought was that without the format to follow, I might actually just jot down my train of thought on certain topics as I get to it. Since this is actually kid #6 to come into the house, I'm sure all bets are still off... but my intentions are good.
In order to encourage our six-year-old daughter to be brave about an upcoming trip to Disneyworld (and the associated water parks, roller coasters, scary adults dressed up as characters, etc.), my husband told her to "get your brave on." Repeat ad nasuem, at swimming lessons, new encounters with adults, strange activities, etc.
