Grandparents already have the rocker, the knitted blanket and three stuffed animals nobody can throw away. The first baby changes what they want, though: not more things, and not something for the shelf in the hallway. What they want is to be in the room when the small things happen, and to have proof afterwards.
That is a hard gift to buy for someone else, which is why most people end up with a gift shop rattle and a card.
Start from who is holding the baby
The one wrinkle worth knowing before you buy: the print comes from a photograph taken on the spot, not from an old picture in your album. Whoever does the capturing needs the baby’s actual foot in the frame, on a plain dark surface, in window light, within a few weeks of the birth.
So decide which of these you are buying:
- You are near the baby often. Do the capture yourself when you are next there. It takes about ninety seconds on a phone and the tool tells you right away whether the print passed.
- You are not. Give the gift and let the parents do their half, in their own kitchen, on their own Tuesday. Nothing arrives in the mail, nothing needs a kit or a messy tray on the floor, and there is no appointment.
A gift card covers both cases and is the option people pick when they are not sure whose foot is going to be in front of a camera. It is the one thing here you can hand over as a card in an envelope.
Which piece, for which grandparent
The plate is the one that goes on a wall and gets looked at every day. It takes the most print, so it is the choice when there are two hands or a whole family to fit on it, and it is the piece most often put in the hallway rather than a bedroom.
The medallion is the small one — a single foot, hung on a hook by the door or on the tree in December. It is the piece a grandparent carries rather than displays, and it is the one people buy a second time for the sibling.
The frame is for the mantel and for the family who wants the photograph and the print together. It holds more people on one surface than the other two, which makes it the usual pick for a first Christmas with a new arrival in it.
Every one of them has a chip inside. Tap it with a phone and it opens the record kept alongside the piece — the date, the size it measured that week, the photograph the print came from. That is the part grandparents use more than the object itself, because it is the part that keeps growing.
What to write in the card
Skip the rhyme. Write the four facts the piece will carry, because whoever finds it in a drawer years from now will want exactly these and no one will remember them: the full name as it should read, the date of birth, the date the print was taken, and whose foot it is when there is more than one on the disc.
If the name has a spelling that gets got wrong constantly, write it in block letters and add one line saying so. It saves a round of messages.
And for the family who is not ready
Some grandparents come to us after a loss, with a foot that is not there any more to photograph. There is no clock on that. Tell us when you want it done, and if that is eight months from now, nothing has been cut and nothing has been charged in the meantime. We hold it until the family is ready, for as long as that takes.
If that is the gift you are trying to give, the way to do it quietly is the card, and a line saying the rest can wait until they want it.
The three pieces and their sizes are listed together here: the keepsakes. The card that covers any of them is here.