The baby book project begins.... nearly 4 years late

So. I had this bright idea to make baby books for the kids.

It all started when I saw REALLY cute baby books at a Christian bookshop. They were on sale, they were cute and they only took 50 pics each.

I thought, "I can do that! That's only 4 pics a month" which in retrospect, are some famous last words.

I had a bit of a bee in my bonnet around the end of the year (as one does if you have annual lists) and started the process of choosing pictures. After looking through the birth month, I was totally drained. I then picked another random month (month 8) and while that was a bit better, I really just hated the project.

When I met up with Louisa and Jeanette in January for our photowalk in the Jhb CBD, I told them about this craziness and they both said to just let it go if I wasn't feeling it.

However, me + cute stationery = ISSUES!

 

With me being all up to date project-wise, I organised (decluttered and tidied) my study recently and found the cute baby book albums.

And so they once again went onto my to-do list.

For one of my April goals, I put "3 hours on baby book project" thinking that if I really focus, I can get it all done this month.

Choose pics, print, put in book.

How hard can it be?

This week my goal was one hour. Last night after chatting to Beth, I thought I'd do my one hour quickly.

Well friends, quick it was not. THREE hours later and I still don't have the 50 pics per child!

However, this is what I managed to do:

• chose 12 pics for each child for the 12-month photo frames (don't buy those things - they are a big mission)
• finally put the Jen.na Pr.att pics (first photo shoot - do you remember the hot pink and lime-green blog I used to have with the black clothing pics in the header?) in a little album
• went through about half the first year "starring" pics in Picasa

I've been thinking about why this is such a mission for me- I'm usually such a get things done person:

1. my photos are terrible compared to now and my photo organisation was a bit OTT so it's a real mission to go into each little folder. This is called over-organising.
2. small babies have never been my favourite kind of kids (except for sleeping babies!), not even my own!
3. D and I look terrible in most of the pics. I think this is shocking to me because somehow we functioned well enough in life to kind-of have a life. We went to work, we took care of the babies, etc. And yet the pics tell the story - we really do not look our best. Now that we're past that stage, I can see better how we looked!

And so I really want to rush through this process and really get it done. I'm tired of dwelling on that first year.

 

Today I got home and printed the 24 little pics. I tried to line them up to show through the little frames and it's driving me nuts (remember I don't have patience for fiddly things). But after I press publish, I'm going to try another way and hopefully those two photo frames will be DONE tonight.

Then I'm going to count up the pics and see if there are 50 or if I need to add some - truly there really are terrible pics from the first year so if I get 50 I love, it will be a miracle.

Do you have baby books for your kids? Do you intend to do them?

Do you think I'm mad? (I do!)

We survived!

Today we went for a baby photo shoot in Pretoria, about an hour's drive from our home.

I'd originally scheduled to have a maternity shoot at 34 weeks with the same photographer but then of course, the babies arrived early.

I then told her I'd do the shoot when they were 4 months (I don't know where that number came from but I had this "4 months" in mind all along) and before you know it, they were 4 months, I hadn't booked the shoot.

We only had to wait two weeks for today's appointment.

I was very tempted to cancel because it's been FREEZING cold here, around 15 degrees Celsius. And naked babies at shoots = colds = lots of money which I'm trying not to spend. But she assured me that she has a heated studio, etc.

This was last week Friday....



and this was yesterday... see the thick winter clothes (they have blankets over them because our house is cold!)


Anyway, we didn't have to take any clothes for the babies because they were naked in all the shots (very cute) and we wore black.

We survived and the babies were very good except BOTH of them peed on her black cloths and on us. She said these were the best twins she's ever photographed (of course D beamed with pride but I'm so cynical I said to him that she probably says the same thing to every set of parents)!

But then came the difficult part - she took 650 pics in total and we had to sift through all of those to get to 30 (that was the package we chose) while jiggling babies on our laps.

Not fun.

An hour and a half later we were done.

I'm very proud of us though because independently, we're both really quick decision-makers (me more so than him) but it's that compromise thing............

Now we wait - takes a couple of weeks to edit the photos and whatnot - and then we get them.

That's the big event of the weekend; tomorrow we'll be in this cold house supervising painters!

What did you do this weekend?