I have this whole procedure I go through when I write thank you notes. The actual writing of the thank you itself doesn't come until the very end. It's probably overkill, but it works for me. I didn't always do it this way. It all started when I had my son.
He was born a month early due to some unexpected water breakage. As it turns out, he came just in time to help (or hinder) the move to the new house the following week. Throughout this time of packing, unpacking, nursing, not sleeping and all the other things associated with new parenthood and a complete home upheaval, presents came in welcoming my son.
Oh, did I mention Christmas was impending too? These additional presents got put here and there and we were very grateful to receive them all, but I was so busy trying to get some sleep while tending to a baby and unpacking in a new home that I had to tell myself I'd get to those thank you notes soon enough and to not fret until life calms down a bit.
I eventually made it, but I realized at that point that I had made a terrible mistake. I had notes on what people had given us. They were on little pieces of paper that said something like, "Aunt Emma: blue six-month onesie. Kate Neighbor: fuzzy blanket." We were given a lot of blue onesies and many fuzzy blankets. I had no idea when I wrote the thank you weeks later which present came from aunt Emma and what onesie was from my neighbor. And that bothered me.
It bothered me because when I put my cute-as-a-button son in the onesie several months down the road, I'd like to think fondly of the person who gave the item to him. But I had no idea. I thought I'd remember, but we had a lot of cute clothes and quite a few fuzzy baby blankets. So I changed my plan for all future gifts in the future.
When I open a gift, I keep it in the box or bag until I can get a little piece of paper, or have the accompanying card handy. I take it all and lay it out on the counter with the giver's name beside the item and then I take a picture of it on my cell phone. Now, I have a visual picture of the item(s) with the name of who gave it right there. I also have a trigger to write a thank you, because I regularly pull and sort pictures from my cell phone.
Enter stage two of the thank you writing process. I have a ThankYou folder on my computer. In it I store all the pictures of gifts we've gotten. I also have word documents with the text for each thank you I write, but back to that in a minute. I keep a copy of the pictures on my computer so I can look back if I can't remember what someone gave us. I also keep a "gifts" folder on my phone so I can refer to it if someone ever asks, "Who gave you that adorable red outfit?" And while it's work to take the pictures in the first place, it's really nice to have them as a reference later on.
So on to the thank you note writing. I write them first in a Word document. It may sound strange to do it that way, but I can type faster than I write and I tend to think at a faster pace than my slow handwriting allows. Also, my arm hurts from writing a lot due to the spine surgeries I've had, alas.
So I end up with a nice copy of the thank you contents and then I can find a willing victim, say my husband or even my mother who has been so kind as to help write batches of thank yous for me in the past, to help do the final writing part. So, if you've ever gotten a thank you note from me and wonder who's handwriting that is, it may well be one of my minions, er, favorite people, helping me out.
The Big Boy Update: Bye Bye X. Sometimes he gets stuck in a "bye bye" loop. Last night after dinner he said, "Bye bye Gramps." Gramps was in his car and on the way home and neither he nor Mimi could hear my son, but my son kept on. So I tried something. I said, "Bye bye elephant" and it worked. He repeated after me. We tried saying, "bye bye" to lots of things on the way home—some real, some imaginary. I think he had as much fun repeating after us as we had coming up with things to say "bye bye" to.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: She can climb up on the bed now. And by this I don't mean her toddler bed, I mean our tall, up high bed the dog needs a stool to get onto. My son was playing with a train app on the iPad and she desperately wanted to see what he was doing. She moved the stool over and through a combination of the stool and leverage from the night stand managed to get on the bed. I hope she wasn't taking notes and won't figure out how to do it again soon.
Fitness Update: Six miles with Uncle Jonathan this afternoon. Fun.
Someone Once Said: Liking yourself is the first necessary step towards loving other people.
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