Within the first month that StarCakes was born I created a Gmail account for him. When GemCakes was born I created an e-mail address for her too. It’s not like I anticipated my one-month old babies to be sending out e-mails anytime soon. It was more so because I wanted them to have an e-mail address with their name so that they could use it in the future. Working with students in higher education I sometimes correspond with students who have unprofessional e-mail addresses. While the Cheesecake kids’ names are not all that common, I wanted to make sure that they had an e-mail address that they could use in a casual and professional setting. Furthermore, if something ever happened to us, I wanted them to know how much they meant to us and be able to have keepsakes of their childhood.
Here were my expectations for creating their e-mail addresses:
- Send them e-mails when they reached certain milestones
- Share their childhood pictures with them via Google Photos
- Send them an e-mail every year on their birthday about how much they’ve grown
- Let them know when important life events happened – i.e. when his sister was born or their first flight across the country
- E-mail them just because I wanted to let them know how I felt about them
- Have other immediate family e-mail them and share stories with them
- Share my hopes and dreams with them about their future
- Send them news articles about current important events
While I haven’t been able to all the things listed above, I do want to be more intentional about e-mailing them at least once a year on their birthdays. My hope is to give them access to this email address when they enter high school. But at the rate that kids are utilizing technology these days, they may be needing an email address sooner rather than later.
Have you thought about creating an email address for your kids? What would you e-mail them?
hostess / wonderful persimmon / 25556 posts
We created an email account for our daughter when she was born. We send pictures to it whenever we send them to family and friends. I hope she appreciates that someday. It’s also her name, so it’s not taken by the time she’s old enough for one.
pomelo / 5866 posts
I made an account in LO’s name. I had 1 aunty, my dad and my mom writing to her for a little bit. She grew bored and took to texting her father and aunt instead. I might send her a birthday letter and some links to a private blog for keepsake. Maybe I’ll ask relatives to do a time capsule letter on her upcoming birthday too. That would be cool!
blogger / olive / 53 posts
we have one for our daughter too and I try to email her whenever I think of it! the other day I forwarded an email from Kendra Scott because one of the necklaces has the same name as her. I told her that it was crazy to think that this may be “vintage” jewelry some day!
wonderful pear / 26210 posts
We actually did use the email address to send out mails, my parents loved to get emails with photos in it “from” my son.
squash / 13208 posts
They both have them – oddly enough when I tried to do DS his NN and our last name was taken – I mean what are the odds??? So I did his formal name.last name instead
grapefruit / 4988 posts
I made a gmail account with DD’s name after she was born. We don’t send anything from it but I email her updates every 6 months with photos and a description of what we’ve all been up to and how she’s grown since the last one, so she can look at them all later. I plan to make one for DS as soon as he is born.
pomelo / 5791 posts
We have them for our kids as well. We generally send little notes when we’re thinking of them, and try to send them on their birthdays.
kiwi / 511 posts
How many of us set up gmail accounts and completely ignored gmail’s TOS that say we cannot set them up for out kids? Yeah I thought so
It seems like such a silly rule, and kind of arbitrary really.
We have them for our kids too.