The first Christmas folder
I bought enough Christmas for everyone. The person I most wanted to impress was still a baby.
The tree
A nine-foot frosted Christmas tree from Amazon. It looked festive and shed glitter around the house. The size was memorable. So was the clearing up.
The presents
We bought presents for our son and his cousins. I wanted to spoil everyone a little. For another Christmas, I would keep one list with a name beside each gift before deciding that I needed just one more.
The little clothes
His first Christmas outfit mattered to me in the way tiny clothes sometimes do: it belonged to a size he would not stay for long. A photograph could keep that part without requiring the whole room to be perfect.