What do you plan to do with the billions of pics of your kids

[Anonymous]

My parents have 3 photo albums of my child hood and that kind of feels like enough to at age 38. I have a handful of pics of my baby years to see what I looked like and then one or two pics from bdays, dance recitals, vacations etc. I also have a shoe box of my own high school pictures and that seems like more than enough of football games, dances, and random pics of the same friends sitting in the hallway.

We get the albums out once every 5 years or so during a holiday gathering and flip through them. I feel like I want more albums or want more pics of the same vacations, 10 pics of the same holiday etc

I’m trying to reconcile that with the thousands of pics I already have of my one and two year old. Even and album a year for them feels like it’ll become way to much and far more than they’ll ever want someday. But if I don’t get a little plan in place now it’ll get more paralyzing to do anything as the digital piles of “amazing” and “special” and “funny” pics gets bigger

I do love having all the pics to flip through on my phone. I’m not taking about the volume of pics taken bc I enjoy them, I just don’t expect that when they’re adult men they would ever want volumes of printed documentation of every year

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My parents have 3 photo albums of my child hood and that kind of feels like enough to at age 38. I have a handful of pics of my baby years to see what I looked like and then one or two pics from bdays, dance recitals, vacations etc. I also have a shoe box of my own high school pictures and that seems like more than enough of football games, dances, and random pics of the same friends sitting in the hallway.

We get the albums out once every 5 years or so during a holiday gathering and flip through them. I feel like I want more albums or want more pics of the same vacations, 10 pics of the same holiday etc

I’m trying to reconcile that with the thousands of pics I already have of my one and two year old. Even and album a year for them feels like it’ll become way to much and far more than they’ll ever want someday. But if I don’t get a little plan in place now it’ll get more paralyzing to do anything as the digital piles of “amazing” and “special” and “funny” pics gets bigger

I do love having all the pics to flip through on my phone. I’m not taking about the volume of pics taken bc I enjoy them, I just don’t expect that when they’re adult men they would ever want volumes of printed documentation of every year

I meant I NEVER feel like I want more albums / pics of my childhood events

[Anonymous]

Put the phone away and enjoy your kids. Take pics sometimes but you don’t have to document every moment. The kids will be better off if you just put the phone in your bag and leave it for a while.

[Anonymous]

My dad is an avid amateur photographer. He made 1-2 big thick albums per year when we were growing up, and continues that to this day, now including his own photos & those of his grandkids (that his kids send him).
I don’t think any of us regret the tall bookcase full of albums.

I also love photography and make a Shutterfly photobook about once every 6 months and after a big trip (every few years). These don’t take up much space and are nice to have. Of course I keep far more digital photos in organized folders on my computer, but it’s nice to have the favorites in print. My kids are 6 & 10, FWIW.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Put the phone away and enjoy your kids. Take pics sometimes but you don’t have to document every moment. The kids will be better off if you just put the phone in your bag and leave it for a while.

Some of us use a real camera and take photos of cool places, nature, events, etc. There’s no reason to assume OP is taking iPhone photos of her kid every second on ordinary days.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Put the phone away and enjoy your kids. Take pics sometimes but you don’t have to document every moment. The kids will be better off if you just put the phone in your bag and leave it for a while.

Here’s what I do: I signed up for the freeprints app and every month I get 100 “free” photos (you have to pay for shipping but it still works out to a decent bargain). I then take the pics and put any special ones like birthdays, vacations, etc. into a really basic scrapbook (Like just solid-colored paper with photos stuck in and handwritten labels to explain why it’s special) and the rest go into a box of photos for each kid. Occasionally they like to go through their scrapbooks and they really love that but it’s not a big amound of effort on my end. Like 20 minutes to order and then 20 minutes when I get the pics tonwort them and stick them in.

[Anonymous]

I make an annual photobook with Shutterfly. They are on a shelf in the living room and the kids regularly take them out to flip through them.

I'm also occasionally adding to photobooks for the kids that I plan to have printed and give to them when they go off to college. Keeping those edited to just the best pics is challenging and will likely end up being a 2-volume set for each child.

[Anonymous]

Choose 10 amazing ones a year...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I make an annual photobook with Shutterfly. They are on a shelf in the living room and the kids regularly take them out to flip through them.

I'm also occasionally adding to photobooks for the kids that I plan to have printed and give to them when they go off to college. Keeping those edited to just the best pics is challenging and will likely end up being a 2-volume set for each child.

I like these ideas, thanks!

[Anonymous]

I'm in the same boat OP. I have a gazillion pics of my kids. Part of it may be because growing up, my parents didn't take many pictures and very few of myself during my childhood - some when I was a baby, age 3, then age 10,13. I have only 3 class pics. At age 16 they gave me a camera and I took a few pics when I was in high school and college during events. I really wish they had taken pics the other years when I was young so I would know what I looked like then.

I created two shutterfly albums - one when kids were born and one for their first birthday and my kids love to look at those albums. It was a time consuming process for me since I did it much later and I didn't know which pic to choose from the gazillion I took. The captions took a long time too but they are what make the album special and my kids love to read about themselves at the time the pic was taken.

[Anonymous]

We also do a "family yearbook" every year and my kids love looking through them. I also post a lot to Instagram so it's pretty easy to pull photos from there to put into a Shutterfly book.

[Anonymous]

Maybe stop taking a pic of your kid every time they eat a snack or play on a swing? You know -- the things that kids have done every day of their lives for generations that don't need to be memorialized bc OMG it's soooo cute. Guess what he looks the same eating yogurt today as he did yesterday and the day before that.

[Anonymous]

I have THREE photo albums from my first’s first year. I keep them in a closet for now because it’s insane. It’s a project I keep meaning to work on. Condense to one album of my favorite family pics from that year, and at 18, be done with it. We have a big bookcase and all 18 albums can fit on the bottom shelf. Done.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Maybe stop taking a pic of your kid every time they eat a snack or play on a swing? You know -- the things that kids have done every day of their lives for generations that don't need to be memorialized bc OMG it's soooo cute. Guess what he looks the same eating yogurt today as he did yesterday and the day before that.

i don't for a moment believe that you don't several pics at xmas (or whatever holiday you celebrate), bdays, recitals, school plays, vacations, visits with extended family etc. Just that results in 100s of pics vs the 24 pics on one roll of film that you used sparingly

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maybe stop taking a pic of your kid every time they eat a snack or play on a swing? You know -- the things that kids have done every day of their lives for generations that don't need to be memorialized bc OMG it's soooo cute. Guess what he looks the same eating yogurt today as he did yesterday and the day before that.

i don't for a moment believe that you don't several pics at xmas (or whatever holiday you celebrate), bdays, recitals, school plays, vacations, visits with extended family etc. Just that results in 100s of pics vs the 24 pics on one roll of film that you used sparingly

Sure -- you end up with 100s of pics now of any occasion because you are not worried about only having 24 or 36 exposures to work with. But Christmas or great aunt Bertha's visit or Disney World are a bit different in terms of occasions than going to the park on Tuesday, wouldn't you say? Esp. since you went to the same park on Monday and will go back again on Thursday. Yet to see these mommies whip out a camera at every turn of the step, you assume that this child will never go on a slide again or eat a snack again because they come from a land where slides and snacks don't exist, so we must document this moment to remember that one time we went down the slide and ate cheez its.