Announcement Pressure

I'm trying to be fair and treat both of my children equally. I'm well aware of how second children get less baby pictures and tend to have less attention paid to them. I get that. That's why I'm so stressed out about getting Iain's baby announcement sent out. Ada got one so Iain needs one too. I don't want to cut corners with his just to make my life a little easier either. Call me a bit old fashioned, but I want him to have something nice and formal. I also realize how much work goes into making a baby announcement and sending them out. It is no small task, hence the reason I outsourced it to my friend Anne last time. This time, she's supplied me with some paper she had left over and offered to help, but most of the labor is falling back to me. That said, I've come to accept the reality that I won't have these done and sent out in the same amount of time I did Ada's. It just isn't going to happen. Why? Well...

First of all, Ada's was sent out around February fourth. She was born December nineteenth so that makes my deadline for Iain's to be sent out August sixth which is tomorrow and I haven't even started them. Whoops. I don't have the mailing list ready, the invites aren't designed, and let's be honest, all I have is the paper that isn't even cut to size and some stamps. As Scooby Do would say, "Rut ro".

Some people think this isn't really that big of a deal. And in the grand scheme of things, they would be right. It isn't. But it's important to me to do them right and be timely about it, as much as I can anyway.

I think what is holding me back most in this whole announcement process is getting the right photograph to showcase just how cute baby Iain really is. I used over two rolls of film, yes black and white 35mm film, when I was trying to get Ada's announcement photo. I wanted the control of a 35mm camera and I hadn't switched to a digital camera at that point. In the end, I was torn between two photographs, one that my mom preferred and one that my husband preferred. Knowing my mom would nag me about it forever and thinking it was more important to her, she won. In hindsight, I should have taken more pictures until I got one we all agreed on.

Delaying the photo further is the minor incident we had yesterday that left a small cut on his forehead. Not exactly the best way to showcase his cuteness. Thankfully, we have Photoshop and can fix that if we need to. Chances are it will be healed by the time I get to taking his photo at the rate things are going. And I'm embarrassed to say that my mom, good intentioned as she may be, really needs to learn that it is not okay to offer to put cover-up makeup on a baby's blemish for their announcement photo. Not okay. Never. Period. Just like it wasn't okay to cut cousin Anna's bangs while she was at the hairdresser just because they were driving Grandma nuts and she was under strict orders not to cut them. Again, not okay. I will say that she has that whole "Don't ask for permission, ask for forgiveness later." thing down pretty well. It just better not be me she's asking to forgive her if she gets too close to Ada's hair with scissors. But I digress.

Moral of the story: If you plan to have multiple children and treat them equally, consider setting the bar low to begin with so you reduce the pressure to preform later on.