Perserve the Memories, But Keep Your Sanity

Nine years ago when I was a new mom of one, I had high ambitions of recording every single monumental moment in a beautiful white leather baby scrapbook. I knew nothing about scrapbooking, but it seemed like the thing to do with all these conversations occurring from other moms of new babies. Scrapbook while the baby is sleeping! Document those memories! Think of the joy she will have looking back on it as an adult!

To this day I am still caring my memories of the agony stenciling the letters on colored paper and then cutting the letters out to glue on for my titles on the pages. I was completely clueless about what I was doing (alphabet stickers, anyone?!). After getting together with other scrapping friends and going to crop fests, I soon caught on. Oh, the pictures (!), the memories (!), the time...

When my second daughter came along I knew I had to do a baby book for her. I couldn't let Lucy start out with a brand new life already on unequal grounds with her sister. So of course, Lucy got a scrapbook. Megan was growing up by then and we had moved into a toddler one. She would be starting preschool in a year and I was wise in my scrapbooking knowledge to know what that meant.Now the girls had these beautiful individual books, but what to do with all of the family pictures of trips and holidays? Might as well scrap them too…into a family album. You can see how this got slightly out of control very quickly.

The truth was, I didn't really enjoy scrapbooking. Some people spent hours on a single page, but I had more of a "get it done and documented" attitude. To me it was never ending. You are always behind, there is endless thematic sticker shopping and the constant ordering and organizing of pictures. It just wasn't fun for me and this "hobby" loomed in front of me. Then Max came along and I knew something had to change.