Not Exactly Grandma's Brownie

A relatively typical day for the three of us includes some sort of variation of the following: get up; feed Max; hang out with Max; shoot pictures of Max; try to get ready for work; race off to work; whoever went to work comes home; put Max to bed; load pictures from earlier on computer.
Then what happens is, I think, a fairly new thing: We sit in front of the computer and marvel at our little boy. We laugh at that day’s shots and then go back and look at shots from when Max was first here. We get all giddy, looking at how big he’s gotten and how he’s smiling now and how he spanked Lamby three times today and two times yesterday. We do this for a little while and then we watch a Netflix or catch up on stuff that we’ve Tivo’d.
There’s something so spectacular about having a visual recap of each day. And something about being able to quickly Picasa back a few weeks and see how he didn’t quite fill out that onesie as much as he does now.
A while ago, when I was smarter, I might think about the new way in which our relationship with the boy is mediated by this quick digital photography. In a funny way, I would’ve thunk, pictures, being what they are, make it all seem more real, even though, right, it’s less real?
However, those days are behind us and, now, I just wipe my son’s ass. Then I go into the living room and look at pictures of him with my wife until, laughing like stoned teenagers, we wipe tears of joy from our eyes.