I don't know about you, but it seems to me that with motherhood comes a certain amount of "mommy guilt" - things you do or moments you have when you know your parenting skills aren't at their best. Things like using the TV to occupy your kids, counting fruit snacks as a fruit for the day, putting them to bed too late, putting them to bed too early (you do this to Jane and she will take turns pretending she is either Mary Lou Retton, doing floor routines in her crib, OR Shirley Temple in her best musical debut), telling them that noisy toy is "broken" or "lost" when you really just chucked it in the garbage, giving too much attention to one child because the other one is being a serious stinker, skipping whole pages in nightime story books because you are too tired and hoping they don't notice, college savings fund consisting of the change fallen behind the dresser, oh...the list just goes on....
Anyway, so here is my latest source of mommy guilt.....scrapbooking. Or the lack thereof. Allison's first birthday is in a week. So far my scrapbooking of her first year consists of...nothing. Haven't done a thing. Jane has a scrapbook for her first year because when she was 14 months old, Jev and I took a vacation alone in the middle of winter up to a condo and I sat and scrapbooked for 3 days straight...literally (I was pregnant with Allison and couldn't do much anyway). Past that, I have nothing else for Jane. And I am not going to have another scrapbooking vacation anytime soon (mostly because it isn't what I would choose to spend vacation time on). Looking ahead, knowing that I now have 2 kids to keep up on, and maybe adding others in the future, I have no idea how I am supposed to keep up on this scrapbooking monster.
So, I ask you, what do you do? Does anyone have any good insight on this? How do you find time to scrapbook or have you found another alternative? I know this blog is a good journal, but I have so many pictures and I figure as my kids get older, they will want some sort of picture book that is just about them. I do family photoalbums that I try to keep current, but they are just the basic brown books with slots for pictures and a little caption.
I have been thinking about doing the online photobooks, where you just drag and drop pictures into premade backgrounds, like the ones you can find on Shutterfly. I can't decide if it seems to impersonal. Plus, what do you do with all the little papers and "scraps" you aquire over the years, like their baby footprints from the hospital, blessing certificates, etc.?
I dunno, in the whole scheme of things, it isn't one of those pressing matters, but it is one that has just been bugging me lately so I thought I would send it out there to the Universe and see what comes back.
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5 comments:
digital scrapbooking - I use photoshop elements. I'm too cheap to do the real thing, hate the mess, and it take too long. I can do a few pages at a time on my computer (in an hour or so). Shutterfly can then print and bind your digital pages into a book.
I've never tried digital scrapbooking, but it sounds very cool. I just have 8.5 x 11 binders that I throw together pages for, maybe three times a year. I take a Sunday and just do it. I print out a few pictures (though I think I'm going to use Costco next time) and put a few cards, pictures, etc in and Voila! I'm done. It took me four hours or so a few Sundays ago to catch up on everything since September for all of us. I do a scrapbook for each kid and one for our family. They aren't real cute, but my kids LOVE to look at them. At the most I use "cute" paper and maybe a few stickers. I don't even back my photos with contrasting paper--Horrors! It really is all just thrown on, but it works and the scrapbooks exist. Also, I am only going to do this for them until they turn 8 and get baptized. Then they are on their own. I'll keep stuff for them, but they have to do the work, choose pictures, etc. If they don't want to, then at least they have the first eight years of their lives recorded and I'll continue doing the family one. Since you asked....
With the way MY scrapbooking is going, I'm going to end up giving them all the pictures of their childhood on DVD when they leave for college! With digital photography, I have a hard time remembering to print anything out, let alone scrapbook it...
I like windybrook's comment. I think I'll copy her, b/c I'm with you -- I am not into scrapbooking but I want somewhere to put it all without all the work and I don't know where to turn. Her idea sounds great.
You know better than anyone that I am not a scrapbooker and amazingly, my kids have survived. Sometime when I get things sorted I shall give you a whole box of Jevan pictures that you can do 'whatever' with. You might even prove to him that he had a childhood, which he vehemently denies.
PS. You're new background is very nice to read with.
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