Showcasing Childhood Memories When You're Not a Scrapbooker

If you’re not one of the four million Americans who classify themselves as scrapbookers, you may be floundering helplessly to organize the Kodak moments of your growing children. While scrapbooking is the third most popular craft in the nation, some of us just aren’t crafty! Have you ever attended a graduation party where scrapbooks galore were on display, all lovingly and beautifully crafted by a doting mother? It can give you an inferiority complex. Maybe you’ve viewed trendy digital scrapbooks, set to specialized music, and thought to yourself, I’m not a technical person and wouldn’t enjoy lumbering through the software manual to decipher the instructions. Don’t throw in the towel--there are alternatives for showcasing your child’s milestones and precious moments.

Picture albums today aren’t like they used to be.  Remember thumbing through your family’s albums decades ago when pictures lost their “stick” and were falling out faster than you could turn the pages?  To recall the encapsulated occasion, you had to remove the picture from its spot to read the caption on the back of the actual photo, unless it was an old Polaroid print with something scrawled across the bottom.  Many of today’s photo albums are acid-free, meaning they won’t eat away at your pictures, and they hold pictures in place with small prongs under acetate sleeves.  Lines are often included for you to pen short captions, so once you have your picture in place, you don’t have to mess with it ever again! 

While scrapbooking is a time-consuming, space-robbing, and costly hobby for enthusiasts, assembling pictures with short captions in a photo album is much less daunting.  Resist the temptation to include all the adorable shots in the albums—lump most of your photos in special storage boxes that can be indexed by date and stacked in cabinets or on shelves.     

To help you decide which pictures are photo-album-worthy, consider these suggestions:

· The day your child was born/the delivering physician holding your newborn

· Baby’s first bath

· Baby’s first display of the social smile

· Baby with all the generations of grandparents still living

· Baby’s first time rolling over, crawling, and walking

· Baby’s first holidays

· Baby’s first time at the pool

· Baby in first leaf pile

· Baby’s first haircut

· Baby’s first time on the potty

· Baby’s first time coloring, painting, or crafting

· First day of pre-school

· Other special occasions such as riding a pony, playing at the park, attending a carnival, going on vacation, etc.

· School plays

· Art shows

· Field trips

· School sports events

· First dates

· School dances/proms

· School honors programs

· Graduation

Obviously, major milestones are more frequent early in your child’s development and level off as your child grows. By limiting your photo album collection to more memorable occasions or “firsts” and organizing them sequentially, you and your child will enjoy decades of recalling “the good old days” as you page through the pictorial story of his or her life. Your captions can be witty or plain—whatever works for you. By being selective, you will find yourself with only a few albums on your shelf instead of mountains of scrapbooks collecting dust and taking up too much space.

At the thought of penning your child’s life story, avid communicators will excitedly start typing away while everyone else bemoans, I always hated English class.  You don’t have to be a good writer, speller, or English Major to create a journal your child will enjoy.  Have you ever asked your parents, What was my first word?  When did I lose the training wheels?  What was my first pet?  How did you decide on my name? When did I lose my first tooth?  At some point in time, we all have questions about our childhood we pose to parents who often respond with, I don’t remember.   If you are an only child, your odds are better of obtaining a correct answer, but if you had siblings, your parents most likely will get their wires crossed trying to remember which kid did what.  Don’t let that happen with your kids!  Kids love hearing stories about when they were little.  They like to hear you mimic their mispronunciation of words during their days of speech development.  They like to hear what TV shows they loved at various ages.  For children to continue developing a healthy and positive self-image, your chronicle of their lives proves  what they have said and done matters to you and was important enough to capture in print. 

It’s best to start journaling for your child before he or she is even born.  Journal how much you (if you’re the mom) gained during pregnancy, your spouse’s reaction to the joyous news, what the initial ultrasound showed, any complications you encountered during pregnancy, how the baby name was selected, how you decorated the room, and the details of the baby shower.  Once the baby is born, document when he or she started sleeping through the night, where each pediatrician’s check-up placed them on the growth chart, when they moved into their own room, what foods they liked and disliked, when the first tooth appeared—you get the idea. 

As your child’s speech develops, include in the journal the cute phrases that tickle your funny bone.  For example, I noted when my daughter referred to the kitchen as the chickens.  I’ve always told her she has an angel face.  Once when she was in trouble for not listening, she tearfully informed me, The angel face is crying.  Sosty the Snowman was her interpretation of the Christmas classic, and during the winter months, she dubbed the snow frosted flakes, after the cereal.  Someday, she will read those accounts and smile, and your children will too when you include amusing anecdotes in their journal. 

If you aren’t updating your photo album with consistency, try including complementary digital shots in your journal.  Digital photos enhance the written word and break up large chunks of text to make it more visually appealing.  Try including at least one photo per page.  In addition to the saved journal on your hard drive, remember to print a hard copy as you complete each page.   Place it in a 3-ring binder so that this priceless volume isn’t destroyed if your computer crashes.  Even if you’ve let a few years slip by without a documentary, it’s never too late to start capturing the special moments that are still ripe for the picking.   

In addition to the photo album and journal (or in lieu of it), save some of your children’s treasures from each year. To conserve space, try choosing special items that will fit into a 9 x 12 manila envelope that will easily fit into a file cabinet or storage chest. When your child is grown, your heart will warm to the Mother’s or Father’s Day card he made you when he was six. Keep a lock of hair from her first haircut, and see if the Tooth Fairy will let you keep his first tooth. Her first written story is worth its weight in gold—the more misspellings, the bigger you’ll smile later. How about those letters to Santa or the Easter Bunny?

 

Someday, you might find yourself spring cleaning and stumble upon the photo albums, journals, and file folders of your children, now gone from the nest and with families of their own.  You’ll decide to take a quick glance at them and find the backdrop fade to white as you lose yourself in time.  Who is that young, thin mom holding the toothless girl with pig tails?  Hours will pass and the cleaning will be forgotten as tears moisten your cheeks.  You’ll reach the end of the photo album, you’ll read the last paragraph of the journal, and you’ll return the valedictorian speech to the envelope.  Then, you’ll pick up the phone and call your son or daughter to say, “Let’s have coffee.  There’s something I want to show you.”