Thanks Goodness for Date Stamping

Since A. is 19 months old now, I figured it was about time to finish her baby book. As I started working through it, I was reminded how uncool I am. When I reached the "Popular Musicians" and "Popular Movies" section, I was completely clueless. Thank goodness I found an online resource that helped immensely; however, I've decided that I'll refrain from writing "Lil Wayne" and "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" in her sweet baby book. That would just be, ew.

As uncool as I am, A. is equally unconventional. When I got to the section of "Firsts," I was stumped. She has never done anything according to anyone's schedule or style but her own. She took her first steps long before she pulled up on her own, she opted to not say "mama" until the past few months (and then she went for the less conventional "meee") etc., etc. It made recording these milestones a little frustrating at times. So sometimes I chose not to, because I couldn't figure out what to do.

Then we have the section of the book that's divided into months...and it's perfectly blank after about month 4. I know somewhere in this house is a spiral-bound notebook where I jotted things down at least until month 8, but I have no idea where it's hiding. Again, 1600 square feet = black hole.

After spending a whopping 30 minutes on this project and starting to feel defeated, I remembered that J. and I have the annoying habit of documenting every little milestone in A.'s life. "Look! There's a Cheerio on her nose! Get the camera!" or "Those are the cutest blue jeans! Get the camera!" or "She just made the funniest face 5 minutes ago, and I'm sure she'll do it again any second now. Get the camera!" It's so bad that she calls the camera and video camera by her own name, because that's all she's ever seen on either one.

So with the 20,000 jpegs taking up massive storage space on my hard drive comes the one thing that will save me--file date stamping. That's right. Now I can "remember" the first time she crawled or took several small steps or ate spaghetti (we have at least 200 pictures of that activity alone). And one day A. will look at the exhaustive detail in her baby book and say, "Aw, Mom. It's so apparent how much you love me, and I will forever be indebted to your thoughtfulness. You are the best mom in the world, and to thank you I will send you on an all-inclusive Caribbean vacation and clean your house." Yep. It's going to happen exactly like that.

Anyone have any great baby-documenting victories to share? Any tips that may help me through this process? Anyone need to confess, "My daughter is 42, and the baby book is still blank." Don't worry: If that's the case, I won't judge you. You have your own daughter for that.