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Great gift ideas for newborns? You must first realize that gifts are not really for the newborn but rather for the new parents. My niece was pregnant with her first child ... which turned out to be identical twin boys. The entire family was thrilled because she was the first of the next generation to have a child. The down side was that she and her husband lived about 600 miles away.

It was also uniquely special for me because I am also an identical twin. I wondered what I could give that would not be just one gift in duplicate, as was frequently the case with gifts for my twin sister and me as we were growing up. I thought about it for a very long time because I didn't want to give her the typical gift of blankets, diapers, 'onesies', etc.

I eventually decided to give her a gift that was partially handmade and partially store bought, but with a twist. I made what I have come to refer to as two individualized 'memory boxes'. These memory boxes can and have been used to store items which mark the passages of time for newborns, the "firsts": sonogram, first pair of booties, the foot print provided by the hospital, birth/baptismal certificates, christening gown, first haircut, and the like. I also gave her 13 disposable cameras and wrote on each one: 0-1 month old, 1-2 months old, 2-3 months old, etc. The 13th camera was inscribed "First Birthday Party".

These gifts allowed the new mom and dad to record and preserve the first year of their twins' lives. I was told recently, that the boys, now 7 years old, occasionally ask to see their 'baby booty box' knowing that these boxes contain the special things about their births and infancies that might otherwise have been tossed into a drawer or stored away in the back of a closet somewhere or lost forever.

My niece recently asked me to make two new memory boxes for the twins to use as their own secret stashes for all the little things they feel they MUST KEEP FOREVER. Now that their individual personalities have developed, these boxes will be much more tailored to their individual interests and personalities.

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