pic | Imamother

chen

Tue, Jul 18 2006, 12:23 pm

Teens don't. Adults do. (care about their baby stuff, that is.)

1. Go thru the pics and throw out (GASP!!! shock

She can't mean it!!!)( she can and she does) all the ones that are out of focus, duplicates (with exception below), stupid or just plain ugly. (Put yourself in your child's place: would YOU want a pic of yourself that looked like that? No? out it goes.) yes, we know they are your dc, so if you can't be objective get help from an impartial neighbor. Keep only the ones that are actually good. No cheating, now. Give the rejects to your neighbor to shred. At this point you should have reduced your stock by at least half.

2. Duplicate or reject pics from camp, b-day parties and so on that have their friends in them--pass along to the friends. Now those pics are THEIR problem and who knows? One of them may be the only pic your son's friend Shmuli has from the entire 6 years he went to Camp Agudah.

3. Now here's the hard part, so if you didn't get outside help yet, now may be the time: wherever you have really, really good photos that are similar but not exact duplicates (Shani from the left, Shani from the right, Shani straight forward, Shani with head tilted, Shani with big grin, Shani with tentative wobbly smile), choose ONE for that child, ONE for each sib, ONE for you, and ONE for each relative you wish to so burden--oops, I mean whose life you wish to enhance with a pic of your dc.

4. Get a nice big box, one for each child, plus one for you, plus an envelope addressed to each outside recipient. An adult shoebox will do, or an acid-free photo storage box from a place like Hold Everything, complete with index tabs, depending on how serious you are about archiving.

5. Decide which pics go to which relative and which go into each child's box and yours. Make sure each child's box has a number of pics of his sibs at diff. stages of life as well as pics of himself, with and without sibs.

6. You can do this either before or after divvying up the pics, but after trimming back the collection: put the pics in approximate chronological order, or into categories like "trips" "camp" "school" "simchas", whichever you prefer. Use tabbed divider cards that fit the boxes, or envelopes.

7. Label each box with the child's name, mail the envelopes to the addressees, and you're done. (For now.)