Dear Kim,
I feel like such a terrible mother! My girls, ages 14 & 12, have started babysitting some of the children in the neighborhood, so suddenly they’re into babies. Anyway, yesterday the 14 year old asked me where their baby books were because she wanted to look through them. As you can probably guess by my “I feel like such a terrible mother” statement, I never made one for either of them! Crap! I always meant to do it but I never got around to it.
I told her that I could either look for it or we could go to the mall to buy whatever she wanted. She chose the mall, thank goodness! I know it’s only a matter of time before she asks again. What should I do? Should I be honest with the girls about how overwhelming and time consuming motherhood is that you sometimes (or always) forget to formally document everything OR should I throw something together real quick?
Thanks so much!
Baby Book Blues
Dear BBB,
In my opinion, honesty is the only way to go…if you want to crush your children and look like an unsentimental bitch.
Listen BBB, I’ve been in your position. In fact, the only legitimate thing I have in either kid’s baby book is whatever happy bullshit I wrote in there BEFORE actually having the baby. That’s right, after receiving the baby book at the shower, I immediately filled in the sections “How your parents met.”, “Your Family Tree”, and “How we told everyone we were expecting.”, but after that I got nothing but the words “sore nipples” written in what I think is blood.
Take heart, it’s never too late to create a baby book for your children, it just takes time, patience, and enrollment in a Photo Shop course held at your local community college. Why Photo Shop? Because why record boring old memories when you can create fabulous new ones! Give your kids a childhood that they can really brag about! It’s not like they’ll remember if it actually happened or not. *do not try to create new memories for things that supposedly happened after age 10…they start retaining shit around then.
Here, take a peek into the albums I’m putting together:
Remember when we went swimming with sharks off the coast of Australia?
source www.freestockphotos.biz
“That guy behind you got eaten but you survived because they thought you were one of them. You’re so clever!”
Or how about the time we went to Alaska?
source www.geprek.com
“You can tell we’re in Alaska because of Ana’s warm PJ’s and we’re huddled together because it’s cold. And there’s a polar bear next to us.”
Ahh, France! That was a wonderful trip. Even the French loved you…and they normally hate Americans.
source www.quotes-pictures.feedio.net
“We bought you that dress in a cute Parisian boutique. I believe it was called La Target.”
You LOVED the great pyramids of Egypt!
*note: We went straight from Alaska to here, no time to change. Needless to say, we were hot.
source www.wikiveler.com
“I said ‘Look, Ana, it’s a triangle!’ and you said ‘No mama, dat shape a tetrahedron.’ You were a genius even then!”
Who had the best 7th birthday ever?! COLLIN DID!
source www.wallpapers.xs.blogspot.com
“We had oxygen pumped in so that we could light the candles.”
BBB, see what I mean? Sure it takes less time to put together a plain old baby book, but your guilt is screaming “Give them something more than 20,000 pics of Chuck E. Cheese!” I should know.
You’re welcome!
Kim
