Thursday September 20 2007 800 am
This IS Your Book, Baby
Posted by Tracy Hahn-Burkett under Domesticity , Miscellaneous , Parenting on a Daily Basis , Parents are People, Too , WritingLeave a Comment
Confession time: I am not a scrapbooker. I know that fact groups me with only five or less percent of American moms (or maybe it just seems that way), but I am never going to sit at a table for hours and make cute pages of memories for my children out of irresistible photographs, adorable little stickers and colorfully patterned paper.
When does everyone do this, anyway?
In addition, while I used to be great at selecting photos I like and placing them in albums, I no longer do that, either. I am, actually, slightly ashamed about this one, and I do plan to get to it someday. Unfortunately, with each passing month, the number of giant plastic bins storing these to-be-culled photos grows; the task is now nearly as daunting as raising my children.
So baby books, as you might imagine, are also not my thing. I was actually pretty diligent about maintaining my son’s baby book for a while; for three years and eight months, to be precise. But then my daughter came home.
Since then, I’ve barely touched either of their books.
I have long felt guilty about this fact. After all, feeling guilty is something you can do anytime; it’s perfect for multitasking. But then I had an epiphany about my kids’ neglected baby books: this blog is their baby books.
It may not be pretty, or decorated with pink and blue swirls and cute little elephants. But if they really want to know what their childhoods were like someday, they won’t get a better record anywhere. Yes, I’ve got their weights and measurements on their growth charts and in my PDA, and those photos are stored on CDs and memory cards somewhere, but the real memories of their childhoods, from the perspective of their mother, are here. (And here is also where they can see what the heck Mom was doing all of that time she was sitting in front of that darn computer instead of doing housework.) Maybe I’m just caught up with the times in my hip and modern use of technology. (Okay, so that would be a first.)
Just don’t look for me at any scrapbooking parties.
