Documenting your life: What to do, what not to do?

One of the awesome perils of being a new parent is figuring out what sorts of neat-o things to do to document your life. In this age of newfangled computers, there are literally MILLIONS of things a person can do to make sure every aspect of their child's life is documented. I haven't checked, nor do I want to, but I'm guessing I could find a website that will bronze your first poop in the toilet if I so wished to keep something like that... and I don't. You're welcome.

Instead of getting a second mortgage on the house to pay for all of the cool keepsakes, I've done some picking and choosing of a few options that I think will best sum up your childhood. I've had a blast doing these things and I hope, someday when you're older, you will appreciate having them!

What to do:

*Photo books - Your mama is not a scrapbooker. I am always impressed by the myriad of awesome scrapbooking materials they sell and do find myself staring longingly at all of the cool stickers, but when it comes down to it I am not someone who should be trusted with pinking shears and photos. Instead, the librarian in me appreciates the type of life-documenting that will last a lifetime! I chose to do photo books for you because I never have to worry about photos falling out, getting creased, or fading away. For your first year I did a photo book every three months because you were growing SO quickly! For each year after that, I'll probably do one or two books per year. I've purchased them in triplicate, one for each grandparent. We actually don't have our own copies of the books right now, but they're saved on the website and I can re-buy them anytime!

*Memory Keepers - There is a website called PaperCoterie that has these AMAZING memory keepers! They are boxes with customizable exteriors, which allow me to save all of your neat little odds and ends for the year in one organized place! So far we've done one for 2011 and I just got the 2012 version the other day. They can sit on a bookshelf with the year emblazoned on the side so you can easily pull down one of the memory keepers and find all of your neat knick knacks from that particular year! This is actually one of my favorite ways to document your life because they're just so spiffy looking AND super helpful when it comes to organizing your stuff.

*Funny things Gracie says journal - One of the great things about you learning to talk is how often you will say funny things that leave your dad and I wondering, "Where on earth did she hear that?" I didn't want to forget those neat things so I bought a journal (with your picture on the cover, of course!) called, "Listen Up! Baby G says what's on her mind..." In this journal we will write down all of the ridiculous, cute, heart-warming, and funny things that come out of your mouth!

*Christmas Ornaments - I knew I wanted to come up with some sort of fun way to document all of your Santa pictures for as long as you'd let us plop you on his lap. I took your first Santa picture and made it into a cute Christmas Ornament with the year beneath it. I'd like to get a neat ornament holder to hang these on the mantle each Christmas. When you stop wanting to sit on Santa's lap, we'll just put another type of Christmas picture of you in an ornament! You're not getting out of it just because you stop believing in Santa!

*Christmas (and other holiday) cards - Your mama went a little nuts this year sending out cards for Christmas and Valentine's day (on top of your birthday announcement) These things all happened within 3 months of each other and I assume your extended family now expects a new type of card every month! HAHA!

*Blog - One of the most labor-intensive documentation things I'm doing includes this blog. It takes a while to put a photo-book together, but nothing like updating this blog! I like to update about 1-2 times per week right now. If I do this until you're headed to college, I will have thousands of blog entries; many taking an hour or more each to write! I plan to print this blog out each year into a book for you to have when you leave home. I'm not sure when I will start sharing this blog with you, age-wise, but I do want you to have it forever as a reminder that your mom totally digs you and wanted you to know more about yourself as a child when you were older and couldn't remember everything. It's also because as I get older I will probably forget a lot of things, too. I never want to forget these wonderful times!

*Yearly Calendar - Each year I'd like to make a calendar using the previous year's pictures during those particular months. I made your first one at the very end of 2011 using 2011's pictures and we have it hanging up right now in the kitchen. It's so fun!

*Growing up so big chart - We got you a growth chart to document how tall you were each year instead of making marks on a door jam in a house we could easily sell someday, leaving your growth marks behind. Instead, this growth chart peels back off of any surface you put it on, allowing us to bring it with us wherever we go!

*Baby book - And we totally got you a regular old baby book so you would have all the fun information that all the other kids have, too! I'm mostly up to date with it right now, but I do need to add your first birthday stuff to it.

*Plastering my desk and home with pictures of you - Pretty self-explanatory! I often find good deals on free 8X10 photos so I keep rotating new pictures of you at my desk for all to see.

*External hard drive full of pics, neatly organized - As it stands, right now, I have over 16 gigs of photos and videos of you from your first year. I bought a 2 terabyte hard drive to store these things (as well as remote storage at work). I'll probably have to buy another one in a few years because this one will be full!

What not to do:

*Scrapbooking - Like I said, I can't be trusted with scissors! The photo books are better for archival purposes, anyway!

*Taking your picture every single day - We do so many things that sometimes I forget to break out the camera. I do as much as I can, but we can't possibly document every day of your life, no matter how precious each day is!

*Getting professional pics done before you were one year old - Yeah, we waited to do studio pictures until you were a year old. I know some people do them every month (or so it seems) but time just slipped by when we were doing other things! Instead, we have pictures take by us and other family for most of your first year. We will do studio pictures each year around your birthday.

*Bronzing your shoes - I mean, we'll keep them, but I don't see the purpose of bronzing them!

*Putting your face on a throw blanket or a piece of clothing - No offense to anyone who has done this, but I think using a blanket with someone's face on it is sort of creepy. I'll also probably never walk around with a loved one's face on my shirt, either, but maybe it's too soon to make that statement!

I hope you enjoy seeing all of these fun things we've done to document your childhood half as much as I've enjoyed making them! I'm also guessing we'll add other things down the line as I find new and exciting ways to plaster your face on something!

Putting it all in perspective: How to deal with a frustrating baby.

Overall I would say you are a really good baby.

A lot of the things people warned us about haven't really happened. You're happy, giggly, hilarious, fun, exciting, brave and adventurous and nearly every minute with you is wonderful beyond words! However, there are times... every now and then... where... Hmmm, how should I say this?

You can be very frustrating.

Now don't get me wrong, we spend the majority of our time with you laughing our tails off or commenting on how completely amazing you are in every single way! But sometimes you can be extremely trying on your poor mom and dad's patience. Currently, you are 13 months old; far away from the terrible twos. However, you have shown yourself to be quite advanced and sometimes I think maybe you're practicing your craft so you're extra good at it by your next birthday. I have no doubt AT ALL that you will succeed beyond our wildest fears!

What sorts of things do you do to frustrate us?

1. You sleep through the night right now in the sense that you only get up once (somewhere between 4:00 and 6:00 am) wanting a bit of milk before you go back to sleep (until you get up for the day sometime around 8:30ish). Usually, you drift back to sleep after that milk infusion in less than 10 minutes, but LATELY... you've been getting your milk and then telling me all about it through the baby monitor for upwards of an hour and a half or longer. On the weekends it isn't such a big deal because even if you stay up between 4:30 and 6:00 am, I can at least get a little extra shut-eye between 6:00 and 8:30 when you finally get up. On the weekdays, this is a completely different story. When you have been waking up at 4:30 for your bottle and not getting back to sleep until 6:00, that means that I'm up for the day at 4:30 am because I have to be at work by 7:00. No time to for extra shut-eye for me! Believe me, I've tried sleeping through baby-babblin' and your poor mama just can't do it! It's so frustrating to think you're asleep because you've been quiet for the last 15 minutes, start drifting off to sleep myself, and then hear you shriek, "DADA!!!!!!!!!" (followed by giggles). Honestly, it's as adorable as it is frustrating, but I'd be willing to give up the cuteness for a couple more hours of sleep. You're cute enough during the waking hours!

2. You are a very good eater (much like your mom and dad). You love shoving fistfuls of bananas into your mouth. You are usually pretty good about trying new things, but those things don't always stay in your mouth. Your tongue turns into a little backhoe when something you're not entirely certain about lands on it; shoving the mouthful of food out from where it came and landing all over your clothes, the table, the floor... me. Even things that you tried and liked the day before get the backhoe treatment if you're not feeling them RIGHT THEN! It's so frustrating when we try to feed you and you spit everything out! Then, when you're getting frustrated with the process, you start grabbing your plate in an attempt to dump the contents all over the place, which leads to me saying, "no no!!" and you getting mad that I told you no so you grab a fistful of food and drop it all over the table. Sigh...

3. When you wake up for the day you are happy, chipper, giggly, just all-around the bestest little baby in the history of the world! From that moment on, it slowly progresses downhill as you get whinier and crabbier until it is FINALLY (thank heavens!!!) time for your nap! Then, you take your nap, wake up, and start the whole cycle again until it's time for bed. The hour or two after you get up is some of my favorite time with you because you are HILARIOUS! Those whiny and crabby times are a lot less fun. You're finally at the age where you're aware enough to know what you want, but not quite able to convey your meaning to us so we can do something about it. So, basically, we just run around like maniacs trying all sorts of things to make you happy until it is finally time for you to go to sleep. Sometimes we succeed, many times we don't. I'm pretty sure you're smack-dab in the middle of a growth spurt because all of a sudden you feel like you weigh 10 lbs more than you did last week. If I gained 10 lbs in a week, I'd be whiny and crabby, too! I can't really fault you for any of it, but it IS very frustrating.

4. You're also going through a phase right now where you want to be held and put down on the ground... simultaneously. You can't figure out why we can't get this right! "Pick me up, put me down, pick me up, put me down, pick me up AND put me down AT THE SAME TIME GUYS!!!" If we don't comply with this seemingly impossible demand, you get upset. Someday I will teach you the concept of "mutual exclusivity" but until then, I'll just have to try not to get frustrated when you demand such things. (P.S. It's really hard, but I'm trying.)

5. Putting you in the car seat right now is TORTURE for all of us. You just cannot handle being confined to ANYTHING right now. You are constantly on the move and anything that keeps you from running around at half the speed of light is deemed evil and worthy of shrieking screams. We start to put you in the car seat and you begin to wail, kick, arch your back, do anything possible to make it nearly impossible for us to restrain you properly. Once you're in the seat, you voice your displeasure at the tightening of the straps in such a way that people walking by must be certain we are killing you. Then, when you're finally strapped in and we're on our way to our destination, you continue your battery of whines and yelps until we either get to where we're going, or you've finally accepted your fate. You love being out and about, but I've learned that I can really only do about one or two locations in an hour because any more than that leaves both of us incredibly annoyed and frustrated with each other. I can't wait until you're old enough to stop hating that thing. I just hope there IS an "old enough" phase because you're going to be in that thing until you get married if it means you're safer in the car. I mean it, young lady.

6. Then, when you're in the car seat and we're out and about you THROW ALL OF YOUR TOYS off to the side where you can't reach them! After successfully ridding yourself of all of the toys, you decide you want them all back again. I hate to break it to you kiddo... but I'm NOT going to start pulling the car over to play toy-fetch with you every five seconds! Eventually you will learn that throwing your stuff means you don't get to have it anymore. (When will you learn this, by the way? I want to start counting down the days...)

7. Changing your diaper or clothing is about half tolerable and half annoying. Sometimes you're totally fine with letting us do what we need to do and other times it's like trying to dress a caffeinated Tasmanian devil. You do realize if you would just LAY THERE QUIETLY I could get this outfit/diaper on you in half of the time and you could run off and play more quickly, right??? RIGHT??? WHY DON'T YOU REALIZE THIS??? I'm just trying to help you!

There are other frustrating things, I'm sure, that I just don't remember at the moment. Right now, I'm just a little bit tired from that thing I mentioned in #1 up there (I got to sleep around midnight and you woke up at 4:30. You didn't get back to sleep until after I left for work. Mama doesn't function well on 4 and a half hours of sleep, baby.) But honestly, these things aren't that bad in the grand scheme of things and I do try very hard not to get frustrated with you outwardly because you're just a baby and these are all normal baby things. Still, you'd have to be made of metal and gears not to get a little frustrated now and then as a parent, right?

It's all a matter of putting it into perspective.

I say this because I am all too often reminded of how important the art of putting things into perspective can be.

This morning as I was perusing a bit of social networking while working the Reference Desk I saw two different posts from two different people I know from two different parts of my life. They are different in nearly every single way, except they shared the same agony. They had each lost a niece or a nephew yesterday. They each had a small and innocent member of their family pass away and they will never see those sweet little babies ever again. One of the babies had been born very prematurely, lived for 9 days, then passed away. The other was a three year old little girl who had cancer and succumbed to her illness. As I read these posts I was reminded that I had planned to write a blog post about how frustrating you could be at times and, immediately, felt guilty. I was reminded, in that instant, of all of the families out there who would give anything to have those frustrating moments back because it meant the nightmare of losing their babies wasn't a reality. That's when I decided to put it all into perspective.

You have been such a blessing in my life that I can't even put into words how lost I would be without you. If going days without sleep or getting covered in half-chewed rice and peas means I still have you in my life, then I will consciously make the connection between feelings of frustration and the blessing of even having you in the first place. When you get older and I feel like I'm about to lose my mind because you simply will not listen to me, I will remind myself that you and your little non-listening ears are still around for me to hug and whisper sweet nothings into. Through every little annoyance and frustration, I will do my best to engage you with a thankful heart because you are perfectly mine and I still have you.

Similarly, when you're a teenager and everything we do and say to you drives you up the wall, try to remember, through your frustration and anger, that parents don't last forever. Let's all be blessed and grateful for every day we have together as a family. I love you!

Never forget: you are a woman and you have rights!

Here's the thing...

It is HARD to be a girl.

I am glad I was born a girl (and I'm very glad you were, too! A little girl is all I've ever wanted!), but living as a female in our society is, at times, fraught with frustration and inequality. As I write this we currently live in a world where it is okay to pay women up to 30% of less than what men make for the exact same job. Okay, I should state that it isn't overtly okay, (it is illegal to discriminate) but it happens... a lot. We also live in a society that sees nothing wrong with paying for prescriptions for men who want to enhance their sex lives (i.e. Viagra), but we struggle to come up with comprehensive coverage for family planning prescriptions for women across the board.

In nearly all aspects of family planning, women are scrutinized for their desire to be in control of their own "fate." Your dad and I wanted to have a baby. In fact, we wanted to have two babies (not necessarily at the same time, mind you!) We practiced family planning before you came along until we thought we would be ready for your arrival. We did this because we wanted to be responsible parents. We wanted to own a house, have stable income, be mentally prepared for the responsibilities of raising a child... everything was thought out and planned ahead of time. We have the various methods of birth control to thank for not bringing you into the world "too soon," but rather having you at a time where we had it all under control. Now, your dad and I aren't so sure that you will ever have a brother or a sister because we already feel complete with you. Thanks to birth control, we have the ability to exercise our rights NOT to have more children if we so choose.

There are people in the world who would consider us to be very wrong for choosing to regulate our family this way. There are people RIGHT NOW who would consider your poor mom to be some sort of harlot for making the decision to take a pill to regulate my menstrual cycle/fertility or to get an implantation in my uterus, which would keep me from becoming pregnant for up to 5 years. Imagine that? I hope this all sounds completely ridiculous to you by the time you're old enough to read these words because it will mean we, as a society, finally got our collective heads out of our asses and realized that women (and their partners) have a right to plan their families without being stigmatized.

You are the most wonderful thing that could have happened to your dad and I, but we don't necessarily feel like you need a brother or sister at this time because the three of us feels like "enough" right now. I can't even begin to tell you how often people ask me when I'm going to get pregnant again. I can't even begin to tell you how shocking it is to have people think it is their business to know these things in the first place! Imagine their surprise when I tell them we aren't currently considering having another child. Oh, the horror! I've had people go so far as to tell me that it is my moral imperative to have another child because we're such good parents to you and it is selfish not to have more. Um... thanks? (This, dear, is called a backhanded compliment. People will say something nice to you to hide the fact that they are condemning something else about you.) I have a hard time defending our decision to these people because "all children are gifts and you should want more." I think that does a great disservice to you, our only child, because I feel like they're saying I need more than you to be happy. I'm very happy, damn it! You are my WORLD! I'm still trying to come up with a nice way to tell these people to butt out. I may never find a NICE way to do it.

Another thing I hope you never have to experience as a woman, but I have experienced firsthand, is how society thinks that women are a public commodity. The sad thing is that women are just as guilty of perpetuating offensive acts against other women as the men are; sometimes even worse! When I was pregnant with you, any personal space boundaries I may have had before I was pregnant were GONE! As soon as people found out I was with-child, my belly got more rubbings than an inverted puppy. Would you EVER walk up to a stranger and ask to touch their stomach randomly? I hope not. It happened to me several times. Being pregnant also gave people a perceived permission to ask me the most personal questions (like my breastfeeding plans, how much weight I gained, did I have hemorrhoids?) Women were the worst about it. Men, at least, seem to shy away from asking women anything weight-related and, according to your dad, women don't have anything going on in or around their backsides. He likes to believe that girls don't poop. You totally ruined that illusion for him!

Long story short... as a woman people will think you should share personal information about yourself (guys in bars will be pushy when trying to get information out of you, too. Tell them to bugger off!) or accept less than what is owed to you. I want you to know that you are a woman and you have rights! You are more than your body, you are more than your race or your gender. You are a human being who deserves respect and equality regardless of the plumbing you were born with. I hope to do my best to raise you believing that.

Lastly, this world is really hard on women when it comes to appearances. There is a certain standard of beauty shoved down the throats of nearly all women by the media and our peers. I want you to know that this perfect image of the perfect woman is complete and utter bull-hockey. Those women Do Not Exist. The women in those pictures don't actually look like that in real life. Those women are digital. They are virtual. They are impossible in so many ways. I don't want you to EVER use those images as the ruler by which you measure your appearance. You are also more than your face. Of course I think you are beautiful because you ARE beautiful. But you are also smart, funny, fun, energetic, enthusiastic, and awe-inspiring... and you're only 13 months old right now! Imagine what all you'll be when you're older?? Nothing short of amazing, I imagine. You are more than the individual parts. You are the whole package.

I wish I could tell you that all of what I've said will be enough to get you through life. I wish I could say the right combination of things to make it enough. Instead, it is our job to bring you to a point where you fight for your own rights; a place where you are "enough" for yourself just like you're "enough" for your dad and I. (More than enough! Our cup overflows because of you!) Until then, you will always have a safe place from this unsafe and unfair world; in our arms, hugging you tightly.