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My Life in Pictures

Two of my baby pictures are in black and white.

There. I said it. If that makes me a child of the seventies, so be it. Truth is, I feel even worse for my (much) older brother, since reliving his childhood requires an actual slide projector and a screen!

Today, there are about a million modern ways to record the milestones and minutia of our everyday lives, from family websites and baby blogs to virtual slideshows and daddy-made DVDs. But has technology helped or hindered our ability to remember? Might this embarrassment of digital riches actually leave us poorer in the very things we’re trying to hang onto so tightly?

When my siblings and I hit my parents’ house for the holidays, we invariably gravitate toward a stack of tattered, sticky-paged albums. I wonder, will Ben and his future brother or sister one day do the same in front of a computer screen? Maybe... but I doubt it.

Take the dubious delights of digital pictures. They’re essential for emailing, of course, but the downside -- over here, at least -- is that Ben’s more elderly (and computer-illiterate) loved ones are seriously lacking in photographic loot. And that’s sort of sad, since they’re often the ones who appreciate them most.

To balance out all these bits and bytes, chronicling the life of your growing family should be an art and a science. Slow it down -- take real B&W pics, keep a handwritten journal after Baby’s born, dig a hole in the yard and toss in a time capsule. Years from now, when you pull it from the damp, dark earth, your teenagers will revel in the oldness of it. You, on the other hand, will revel once again in what it was like when they were new.