Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Photos for a timeline

There will be no photos in this post despite the title.

Havoc came home with a school project. It is related to their current social studies segment somehow that was never adequately explained. They have to do a time line of their lives.

All 6-7 years of it

What came home was a couple pieces of construction paper glued together with numbers running along the bottom. The child is supposed to, with parental help, mark milestones or events for each year, they want you to use photos. Parent helps arrange the photos & labels & the child decorates it.

Havoc says “Do we have some photos of me to use?”

Oh little boy. Are they so prevalent they are background decor in your life now? Have the numerous photo albums, the hardbound book of your play last year and the non stop photo slide show screen saver on my computer become the same as the legos on the floor? Just things you don’t notice?

I say “Havoc. Mommy has over 10,000 photos that she knows of and that doesn't include the last 5 months.”

“You have 10,000 photos of me?”

“Of you and your brother mostly, but a couple thousand are of things like toys and the house and vacations.”

Havoc goes off to inform Mayhem that Mama has “Ten thousand photos of ME, Mayhem”, which of course sends Mayhem to me wondering “You have 10 fousand pichers of me?”

We looked at the folders of photos on my laptop. Mayhem did not mind that his brother had 15 folders all to himself, while he did not. Until Havoc started bragging on how he has more photos than Mayhem. I had to explain to Mayhem that 10 years from now Havoc would move out & go to college and Mayhem would still be here. Then there would be folders of just Mayhem photos. This seemed to satisfy him and he went back to playing Lego Batman while Havoc and I sorted out timeline photos.

OMG! I have so many photos! I am so not lying when I say over 10,000 and geez can we say ‘excessive’? Havoc had about 20 photos picked out before we finished years 0 & 1 and there was no room. 4 photos a year was pretty much the max. It took us over an hour to choose 30 photos for 8 columns. Every column has a birthday photo, a vacation photo, a Christmas related photo and either a 1st day of school or Ren Fair photo. I had to start skipping folders and just going right to the month with the event because Havoc wanted to look at and discuss every single thing in every photo. Which is sweet and fun to do for about 45 minutes. But after and hour and beginning each time with “how old was I in this photo” which when you are looking at things chronologically and are still looking at pictures in the May2005 folder, gets really really annoying.

It’s a cute timeline. We glued in the pictures I printed & Havoc drew in the columns around them images he remembered from the photos we weren’t able to fit. He took it in today.

I wish I had taken a picture of it.

18 comments:

The Four Week Vegan said...

Sounds like an A+ is coming your way. How special they both must have felt to realize they had sooooo many pics of them.

Maria Ontiveros said...

I totally didn't see your last line coming, and it made me chuckle! I love your writing.
Rinda

Anthea Goodman said...

Awww bless! I'm looking forward to doing similar projects with my eldest soon!

Kim Winter said...

My daughter often asks me if we ever put her down. We have so many pictures and she was born before digitals!!

Suzanne said...

so sweet! i think that's wonderful you have so many photos of them. in my opinion you can never have enough :)

SciFi Dad said...

Sounds like a great project.

We produce anywhere between 2-4GB of photo and video data PER MONTH.

On average, it's about 200 photos and the rest are videos.

Lee said...

I think that is a great project!

JO SOWERBY said...

wow that's a lot of pictures. thanx for the brandy advise.
jo xxx

sharyncarlson said...

Loved the way you ended this post. What a great story, it definitely made me smile :)

Karen said...

What a fab story, I really enjoyed reading your post :)

Deb @ PaperTurtle said...

What a great post! The ending made me smile :o)

Cindy said...

Too funny! And what a good explanation you gave Mayhem. =] We're up to about 9000ish at our house, though not just of the boys. It's fun to go through and look...

Amy said...

We had a similar project, but, it was for family day at school and had to include as many family members as you wanted. Our selection process had to include a lot of vetting by me and a running commentary on just about every single photo.

Kathy M said...

Ok, that must be a standard 2nd grade assignment. We had to do it last year. I think the teachers can always tell the children of scrapbookers.

Unknown said...

That is just too cute! :) Well, as a fellow mom who has over a thousand pictures of her not-even-one-year-old daughter, all I can say is that there is no such thing as too many pictures :)

At least now you know your kids can never accuse you of not having enough pictures of them growing up!

Aunt Becky said...

That's really cool. I hope I never have to do it with Ben. Because if I do, I'm screwed. I have no digital pictures of him here, and then I'd have to break into my dad's computer, which is like Fort freaking KNOX.

Sian said...

That's an amzing collection of photos you have. It will make them feel very loved.

Cindy said...

Too funny! And what a good explanation you gave Mayhem. =] We're up to about 9000ish at our house, though not just of the boys. It's fun to go through and look...