<p>my friend with 3 kids told me how they had so many pictures of kid 1, somewhat less pics of kids 2, and almost no baby pics of kid 3. </p>
<p>Fortunately kid 3 is still too young to know he’s been short changed :-)</p>
<p>As the older of 2 kids, I definitely paved the way for younger brother to get away with stuff I was never allowed to.</p>
<p>We’re so lucky - D (the oldest) looks significantly different, but S1 and S2’s baby pictures are really hard to tell apart, so when S2 gets to the point of caring, I can just offload some from S1’s stack. :D</p>
<p>Kid number 4 is now the only kid living at home and the older three are envious of all the undivided attention he’s getting. I told them he deserves it, having lived through the launching of the three of them. So, yeah, his baby book is thinner than the others, but he’s getting his share of attention. I think being in the middle is probably the hardest. And being one of the younger ones is hard just because there is not as much you can get away with. I used to look at my two younger boys and say, “Give it up. Your older brother and sister already tried that.”</p>
<p>Harriet – that is too funny about the photos.</p>
<p>When ya have 5, ya stop worrin’ about these things. I am, however, ashamed that I did the same thing that Harriet did once, when S5 needed some baby picture for class, and I couldn’t find one of him.</p>
<p>I always thought mine looked very different even as babies as I have blondes interspersed among the brunettes. But now going through the pictures, there are many loose ones that I cannot easily identify. At certain angles, expressions, lighting, they can look like each other. That I handed down the clothes does not help either.</p>
<p>I think we blew it with child #3. He had the best grades, the highest scores (of the three) but it may be that he won’t get into any of the UC’s he applied to. Before the economy went so sour he had completed his applications. He thought he was a shoe in for Cal Poly San Luis Obispo (engineering) and was rejected. He hasn’t received his letters from UCLA (a reach school) or UCI (what we thought was a target school). At the very last minute he applied to Cal State Northridge and, of course, was accepted.</p>
<p>I begged him to apply to a couple of private schools and even more UC’s but, I have to say, we were pretty confident. Now, it looks like he’ll probably go to CC (it’s easier to transfer from CC than a Cal State…even though he has worked so hard in high school.</p>
<p>I kind of thought we had it all under control. I’m holding my breath until the UC’s send out their letters. But the rejection from Cal Poly was hard to take.</p>
<p>I must day my youngest watched her sisters, their admissions process, their attendance at a State flagship, etc.</p>
<p>She decided on private for her, required 2 years of CC to afford the 2 years of private, even with merit. She researched, picked ONE, applied to ONE, rolling, applied in Sept, admitted with merit in Oct, before others had even begun, she was done and she loves it</p>
<p>My elder daughter went to college the same fall my younger daughter went to first grade. It was REALLY difficult having conversations with other first grade parents about their kids learning to read!
So, fast forward 12 years and D2 is waiting to hear from colleges. I have learned that whatever college she goes to does not define who she is. Thankfully, she has options. One or another will work out for her.</p>
<p>Mom2jej, what happened with Cal State SLO? Is it the engineering program there?</p>
<p>I am going to confess here - hope D2 doesn’t read this. On her fifth Christmas, she noticed her older sister had a special ornament with her face painted on it. She asked where was her ornament. My husband and I looked at each other with horror in our eyes, I said, “It must still be in a box in the basement.” We went to all the malls around our house, we were able to find this tiny little booth that had ornaments made of seashells with little girl’s faces. We picked one that looked most like our D2, then asked the owner to put the Christmas year of her birthday on it. If she ever finds out we’ll be paying for many years of psychological care.</p>
<p>Too funny, oldfort. My mother had an ornament made every year for my elder daughter. Younger daughter noticed, when decorating the tree a few years ago, that there were hardly any for her from her grandmother. My mother went to the mall and had several made up!</p>
<p>ingerp–I agree. I am so much more relaxed w/second child (10 years younger than first). Everything is a ‘first time’ w/oldest (from preschool to the college process) & I am correspondingly protective and anxious. With the second, it’s all: “it will be fine.”</p>
<p>Of course she is incredibly confident, hard-working and self-motivated. I’ve stayed out of her way.</p>
<p>We had family photos taken before our youngest was born. Really nice professional photos that adorned our hallway. When he was about two, our youngest looked at the photos and said, “Where’s me?” I felt awful. So a few years later, when we did another sitting, I bought an extra of him and put it next to the ones taken years earlier and then put the other with the current set in another room. I guess he’ll need that therapy fund.</p>
<p>^^ lol! :-)</p>
<p>Oh, I love reading this! </p>
<p>Regarding pictures–I thought all my boys looked different as babies but going through old pictures I’ve discovered I have many that I can’t identify beyond saying it’s one of my kids. I’m pretty sure it’s one of my kids, anyway.</p>
<p>Christmas ornaments–the funny thing is that my freshman s mentioned that the middle child’s face seemed to dominate the Christmas tree. I said that was because he has so many ornaments he made at school with pictures of him. Hey, I don’t control the curriculum! </p>
<p>I guess when we’re passing on wisdom to the younger parents we should tell them things like,“When you have your first child, only take a picture every 5th time you feel the impulse–and write the name on the back because you never know…”</p>
<p>I was really shocked by the amount of school stuff I saved from my first. I was organizing the basement and I mean, I saved first grade spelling tests–not just one either–and fill in the blank work sheets about Indiana History, and just a ridiculous amount of junk. I realized looking through this gigantic bin of crap, that I really enjoyed seeing the things that told me something about who he was then, the essays and little books he wrote. It made me feel a lot better about not saving so much of that stuff with the younger two.</p>
<p>Child 3 (D2) noticed she didn’t have the complete set of her first 5 years of Hallmark Christmas ornaments like the first two so she made her own! I was guilted into getting them all from ebay.</p>
<p>The hardest thing for me is all of the choral events. Having three singing children = listening to lots of boring music while your child is a dot on the stage.</p>
<p>S2 recently asked me how old he was when he first did something. Words cannot express the look of utter shock when he saw a completed baby book FOR HIM. (Not sure if this is astonishment because I had the time to compile a baby book, or with horror because of the ammo it represents when/if I ever share it with his GF! There’s an arguement against baby books right there!)</p>
<p>Disclosure: I was the oldest of five and the only one who had a baby book. Even I thought it wasn’t fair.</p>
<p>CountingDown, we have always called them Blackmail Books or Rehearsal Dinner Books.</p>
<p>We were very amused to learn recently that S1’s best friend since infancy had gone into his own Blackmail Book and removed several photos of an embarrassing nature featuring himself and our S1 - fruitless, since we own duplicates of all of them. </p>
<p>His mom and I think it was a hedge against her using them for senior photo pages in the yearbook. She wouldn’t have done that! But oh, the rehearsal dinners to come someday - that’s a different story.</p>
<p>D2 for several years thought she was ‘dumb’ compared to D1, in each grade K-3 the # of special awards given to every kid in the grade decreased between D1 & D2. Since D2 had them all on her wall, it was easy for D2 to count the number of awards and notice she had many fewer, therefore she must not be as good.</p>
<p>These were the meaningless childhood awards like best smile, best etc, where every kid in the class gets one each time.</p>
<p>I did not figure it out until D2 was in 3rd grade: that award inventory plus an LD caused D2 to feel like a dunce :(</p>