Thank you, and thank you, and you...

The thing with having any big life event, is you end up buried in correspondence that MUST be done the OLD FASHIONED way i.e. snail mail. Like with hand writing that is your best but still just above legible because WHO actually WRITES things these days?

The first experience I had with the crush of thank you card requirements was when I got married. We got engagement presents in addition to wedding presents, and before the actually wedding we were on top of the thank you card thing. And by we I mean me, because while my hand writing is legible, E's is notoriously illegible. He provides the wording when I can't quite manage the right words. Any time a gift was opened, immediately we wrote, addressed, and stamped the thank you card, to be sent out the next day. Some people exclaimed that it was the first time they'd received a thank you prior to the event.

But after the wedding... well... we had just moved and in fact didn't have anything with us but what had come with us in the car (and the gifts of course). I didn't know one family member from another, so there was a least one Mr and Mrs G who got another Mr and Mrs G's thank you card (that's the problem with using the invitation list as the address list, when the gifts have first names and the invitation list is all formal like). I regularly was asked if so-and-so's card had been sent and after writing so many I couldn't remember.

Next time, I remember thinking to myself, I'll have a spreadsheet with the name, gift, and date the thank you card was sent.

And that is just what I did with Ranger's gifts. I created a Google doc and wrote down the giver's name, gift, and the date the card was sent. All was going well until the Bris, when I received two gifts with no cards. Then I stopped by E's office and we came home with several gifts. I was so exhausted, I had thought we could open the gifts later and log the data in the spreadsheet, but I am married to a "do it now so it's done" kind of guy. I sprawled out on the bed feeding the baby while he did the opening and just like that, I have no idea who got us what.
Those cards were especially fun to write.

In the mean time, I've already gotten some indirect queries as to what happened to so-and-so's thank you note (oddly enough, the query was from my side of the family). I've rewritten and resent a card I remember writing and a few that might be duplicates- or maybe not.

I wish I could just email people a thank you note.

Or even better, tweet it:

If U got us a baby gift, it's GR8, thx so much!