1 Mother 2 Another

It’s official.  We have a baby!

A copy of Madeleine’s birth announcement came in the mail.  Seeing her name in print made everything seem so, I don’t know, unchangeable.  As if we’d only borrowed a baby for a while to play at the parenting thing, but now that we’ve announced it to the world, we’re in this for the long haul, no exchanges, no refunds.  Not that I want to exchange her; but I imagine that now that we’ve announced it, I’ve gone from some hip chick with a baby to a mommy.  Does that make any sense?  A sort of reference point shift for my identity.  I’ve been looking at this whole thing as if she’s my daughter, and now suddenly I’m her mother.

And for all my friends who are saying, “How on earth did Jennifer get those announcements ordered and mailed out when her daughter’s not yet two weeks old?” well, I didn’t.  While I was pregnant my dad offered to help out in any way he could, being halfway across the country.  So I emailed him the database with all the addresses (told you I was an organizational freak) and all the announcement ordering info minus, of course, the pertinent details like birth date!

I love quality stationery; I save my pennies and purchase beautiful personalized notecards as a treat, and I’m looking forward to taking my daughter to pick out her first set of personalized thank-you notes (I know, I’m a freak), but when I checked out birth announcements by my favorite company, I found them well beyond our budget.  In addition, Brian wanted to put our newborn’s picture on the front, which not all companies do, so the internet search was on.  Brian found this website – Naptime Cards – that was incredibly reasonable price-wise.  They’ve done a great job, and were super-fast and really nice.  I think they even let you pre-order the envelopes to start addressing beforehand!  At any rate, my dad and his wife ordered them the day after Maddie arrived, assembled them and sent them on their way tout de suite.