Since I was little, I have always been fascinated by photos of my parents from before I was around. I would (and still do!) go through my parents’ “picture drawer” — a stash of their photo prints that dates all the way back to the beginning of their relationship in the 1960’s. Don’t tell, but I even pilfered some to keep in my own house, and now I have photos of my mom and dad on their honeymoon, framed and hung. I think it’s so beautiful to see them in a different light and know tiny pieces of them before they were “mom and dad.”
Now that my husband and I are expecting our first little one, I’m almost a bit regretful to be part of the digital camera generation. The two of us have literally thousands of photos between us, and perhaps 3 or 4 that are actually printed out. Don’t get me wrong—I adore my digital camera and my cellphone camera, but I’m wishing now that I had prints for our little one to paw through someday, and see how mom and dad were before he came along.
So I’m devising this plan for a photo album, using prints from all of our phones and digital cameras.
It’s kind of the opposite of a baby book—it’s a mom and dad book, chronicling all of the adventures we’ve had and will still have together. The general plan is to compile it and give it to the little guy one day when he’ll appreciate it (whether that’s when he’s 2 or 20!). But I love the idea of a set of photos that he can hold, flip through, pore over. It’ll have photos of mom and dad on tour together when we first met, carving our first Halloween pumpkin, in our first tiny apartment, on our wedding day and honeymoon, and all of those other moments that made us a “we” so that we could make him.
Maybe it’ll mean more to my husband and I than to our son, and that’s okay. But the opportunity to put together a visual history that he can hold and treasure is too good to pass up. After all, there’s no better way to tell a story than with pictures, and our story is one that I want him to know all about.
This post was sponsored by Canon Pixma
