only children, take 2

A little background here first: hanging on the wall, I have a framed series of pictures of Greyson. He was small (maybe 6 months), and they're of him sitting up, smiling at me, and then falling over. With spit-up on his foot. They're not amazing pictures, but they're cute, and they're among the first cute pictures that I took, back when I was something of a stranger to the business end of a camera.

Yesterday in the mail, I received a package from a relative. Inside? A set of two framed "picture series." One featured Charles and the other Veronica. Now, the pictures weren't very good. The picture quality was awful (and I usually don't notice these things, so it must be pretty bad!) But the thing that bothered me most (well, really, besides the fact that said relative didn't ASK if I needed/wanted new pictures to hang on my wall), was this concept that because I had a framed series of Greyson pictures, I had to have same of the other two.

Now, maybe this is another only child thing—but I don't want to treat my kids "equally" like that. If I have good pictures of Greyson, I want to feel free to hang them up without having to hang inferior pictures of Charles and Veronica just to be alike. Because we take lots of pictures of all three kids, and someday there will be good pictures of the younger two. Maybe not a series, maybe just one. And shouldn't that be okay? Another relative used to send Charles and Greyson matching presents—so for Grey's second birthday, she sent him a toy cell phone. She also sent one for Charles. Of course, it was GREYSON's birthday, so I don't see why Charles needed a present. He has his own birthday. And, also? Charles was 8 months old. The toy cell phone was for 3-year-olds with teeny tiny parts. Neither of them would ever have noticed if the other one had something different ... or nothing at all, for that matter. (Especially since Charles didn't get that toy until his second birthday, since I put it away without him ever seeing it.)

It's not a huge problem for me, but it's one I genuinely don't understand. Each of my children has a different personality, so I treat them differently. And, if I ever stopped giving one of them a full share of my love and attention, all the exactly alike photos in the world couldn't make up for that. So, by the same standard, it shouldn't matter if Greyson is the only one with a framed photo series ... as long as each of them knows that he/she is loved for who they are.*

(*Not that I expect—or am even planning to try—to change the relatives' minds on this topic!)