If you read the comments from yesterday's posting, you'd know that I am a self-proclaimed picture addict. I think it started, briefly, during my last year of high school and then snowballed through college. By the time I was pregnant with Autumn (and had started to scrapbook), there was no turning back.
When I went to the hospital, ready to give birth, I had three cameras in my bag -- a digital, a 35mm film camera and a disposable black-and-white camera. Even when we left the hospital, those three cameras went everywhere with us, taking up much space in diaper bags, until the disposable was used up. Then we had no choice but to only take two cameras everywhere we went.
Keith and I just upgraded our digital before vacation, so now I only take one camera. But we did get a 2GB memory card so it holds more than 700 photos. We never have to worry again about a full memory card or being out of film.
Autumn's first scrapbook -- aka her baby book -- only made it to six months before I couldn't fit any more pictures in. They say you can fit 45 pages in an album. I have at least that. Figure each page has two sides and I average five pictures per side. By that math, that first book must have 450 pictures in it. Her second book is nearly full and I've only made it another eight months of her life.
As I said yesterday, I have to have 2,000 pictures of her so far and she's not even 2 yet. But it's so easy to do with her being so cute and with her learning, discovering and just doing new things all the time. We have at least evolved from taking a picture every time she smiles to taking them when she's doing something else, too.
This may seem like a lot of pictures, but I don't want to miss these moments. They go by so fast as it is and sometimes you need a photo to jog your memory to think back on something so precious.
We look at Autumn's baby book and see a black-and-white photo of a little 6-week-old girl, mouth wide open, eyes screwed up all shut, screaming. It's so funny to see. We see her rolling over for the first time. We see her crawling along the floor. We see cute outfits, favorite toys, snuggling on the couch, toothless grins and hugs for Mommy, Daddy, grandparents, aunts and uncles.
My mother-in-law jokes with me that I'm going to need a bigger house just to hold all my pictures. Who knows, at this point. But one thing's for sure, I'm not going to stop capturing memories. I'd be too afraid that someday I'll regret it. You can't go back in time to recapture some cute thing the child did. But you can make sure you don't miss it now.